


Wild Geese

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:23:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 59
Words: 200,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In-progress fill for the Hobbit Kink Meme - "I want an AU fic where Dis only agrees to send Fili and Kili along with Thorin’s adventure if she is to also come. She’ll not be left behind, waiting.</p>
<p>And the adventure goes on as planned, except that Dis turns out to be more then capable of taking a life as a warrior if needed."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Read the original prompt and fill here - http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/1990.html?thread=3764934#t3764934 
> 
> Disclaimer - I own nothing here, I am making no profit from this story. I apologize for any misquoted/misattributed lines, I'm trying to follow the movie script as well as I can going on my own memories and the odd You Tube clip/gifsets.

 

_You do not have to be good._   
_You do not have to walk on your knees_   
_For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting._   
_You only have to let the soft animal of your body_   
_Love what it loves._   
_Tell me about despair, yours,_   
_And I will tell you mine._   
_Meanwhile the world goes on._

Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"

* * *

The eldest remaining heirs to the throne of Erebor and descendants of the noble line of Durin mounted their ponies grimly. The last ten minutes were all silence, a curious contrast to the seemingly endless debate of the previous day. The Men who passed them on the roadside paid them little heed, for surely these two dwarves were much the same as others; even taking into account the common racial resemblance, these two looked uncannily alike.  
  
As they set off to the north, the rider on a dappled grey pony broke the stony silence, “Well, that's a day's journey wasted.”  
  
The rider on the brown pony merely grunted in response. “We didn't come to beg,” he replied, his brows knit into a thundercloud. “We knew their refusal was a possibility.”  
  
“If they intended to refuse help from the start, they might have said something about it before we met,” his companion countered. “Would've been a bit more practical than five hours of arguing until they decided they hadn't the stomach for it.”  
  
“You're not wrong.”  
  
“Of course I'm not. I can't believe...five _hours_ , only to be told, 'Your quest is a just and noble one, good luck retaking the Lonely Mountain, do let us know how it turns out.'”  
  
Thorin Oakenshield looked at his traveling companion with fond, if exasperated amusement, which for a moment cracked through his disappointed icy glare. “Dís, I was there, there's no need to hash it out again for me. Don't be so hot about it, you were meant to be the level-headed one.”  
  
“I kept my head,” his sister declared imperiously, drawing herself up in the saddle. “While we were there. I wasn't the one who bent the hinges slamming the door on the way out.”  
  
“Shoddy craftsmanship,” her brother shrugged, but under his would-be-calm exterior, he was fuming. His kinsman, Dáin Ironfoot, the boy-hero of Azanulbizar, turned down his request for aid, aid that would be sorely appreciated if the dragon Smaug still lay within the gold hoard of Erebor. That, of course, was the reason for his refusal. Smoke had not been seen from the mountaintop in sixty years, their home and treasure might even now lie unguarded, perilously close to being claimed by Men or Elves, but the thought that the fire drake yet lived was enough to give the great warrior pause.  
  
“I have my people to think of,” Dáin said by way of explanation. “My heart is with you in this, but surely you have not forgotten the sack of Erebor.”  
  
The insult in that statement was so great, Thorin would have struck him down where he stood, but Dís gave him a warning look and he stayed the impulse. “I have not,” he growled through gritted teeth.  
  
“And so you know how dangerous that monster is, only grown moreso with time, I'll be bound. I'll not risk the lives of my men for a cause that is not ours. I have respect for you, Thorin, and your noble sister, but I was trusted before in such matters and found wise.” He stuck out his hand and sealed the matter. “I wish you luck in this and if your quest is victorious, I hope to feast with you in the halls of Erebor.”  
  
 _Ah yes_ , Thorin thought as he took his fellow dwarf by the hand and bid him goodbye. _I see your steadiness. You deny me as once you denied my father, looking into the gates of Moria and bidding us turn away._ At the time it had been the right decision, Thorin knew. The numbers of their wounded and slain were too great to chance retaking their ancestral home, but this was a different time and yesteryear's caution would only impede tomorrow's glory.

“I am sorry you journeyed so far out of your way for nothing,” he apologized to his sister. It was not common for dwarrow-wives to venture so far from home. At least it had not been in the days before their exile. All his sister had known for most of her early life was movement and she was a widow these seventy-seven years, yet, in a way he could not grieve overmuch for it. Hardship made his sister pragmatic, toil brought out a hardy sense of humor and he could not ask for a better traveling partner. Privately, he knew he would miss her sorely when their roads parted and he journeyed on to re-join the company.  
  
Dís made a non-committal noise in her throat. “Not for nothing,” she said, suddenly very interested in swatting some fly away from her pony's main. “Nor out of the way, come to that.”  
  
Thorin stopped his pony dead in its tracks. “And what do you mean by that?”  
  
“Exactly as I say,” she replied, raising her eyes to look him full in the face. “I haven't gone out of my way if yours is the road I follow. I would not have you think _all_ your kinsfolk are as nervy as that coward Dáin Ironfoot. Imagine, him charging down dozens of orcs before his beard was grown in, yet one dragon has him making for home. Boggles the mind.”  
  
“The plan was that you were to come to meet with Dáin and his folk, explain the quest, remind me to keep my head and go home,” her brother said, his voice a low rumble. That tone usually boded ill for whomever he was speaking with, but his younger sister was made of sterner stuff than most.  
  
“I said I would come with you to Dunland to meet with Dain and go home, yes, and that is _exactly_ what I aim to do,” she retorted, narrowing her eyes fiercely. “Home is not the Blue Mountains, as you've said nearly every day since we settled there. Or have all those fireside talks with the boys on your knees about our 'home' in the Lonely Mountain been bedtime stories to entertain my children?”  
  
“Don't,” Thorin said sharply, his fingers clenching into fists on the reins. “Do not question my devotion to Erebor. I won't bear that talk from anyone, not even you.”  
  
“And I won't bear it from you,” Dís declared, stumping her brother into silence. “If you are to lead a company of a baker's dozen dwarves across this land without any help from our kin in the East, you cannot ask that I sit idly by the window, braiding my beard and waiting daily with my heart in a vice for some word of you. I offer you my service in your quest, Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, as your loyal subject and most worthy sister. Will you take it?”  
  
Dís looked at him with such seriousness and ferocity in her face that Thorin's heart was moved by it. She had no husband to send to fight on her behalf and though she'd given her blessing for her sons to join their uncle and king on this half-mad adventure, what mother would prefer to wait at home for word of her children when she could be there alongside them herself?  
  
“You'll need to sign the contract,” Thorin said gruffly, urging his pony on with a flick of the reins.

The light came back into his sister's eyes and she smiled. “Already have done,” she said, reaching into an inner pocket of her coat and tossing a thick bundle of parchment in her brother's direction. “I met with Balin before we left. He had a feeling it might come to this, dour old pessimist that he is.”  
  
“Balin agreed to this?” Thorin asked, shock coloring his tone. He unfolded the contract and saw clear as day, his own signature Thorin, son of Thrain, that of his old friend and mentor Balin, son of Fundin and below that Dis, daughter of Thrain. “And he did not consult me?”  
  
“Not without a bit of persuading,” Dís admitted, eyes twinkling in private merriment. Too bad there wasn't an artist about to take a likeness of her brother in this moment. It would be a treasure to have an image of that precise look of befuddlement he wore to amuse her in the days to come, she was sure. “In the end, it was agreed it was all for the best.”  
  
“Does Dwalin know?” he demanded, for surely his dearest friend would inform him of deals to bring his sister along on their quest made while his back was turned.  
  
“Oh, he was the one who did most of the persuading,” she grinned. “Said we needed another around to help you keep your sense of humor.” With that, she spurred her pony onward, calling over her shoulder, “Stop dawdling! We're late as it is.”


	2. Chapter 2

Their people were by now accustomed to long days of travel and deprivation. Their lives in the Blue Mountains had a kind of comfort, but when times were lean the menfolk would ride for miles looking for towns of Men who would not turn their noses up at dwarrow craftsmanship. Thorin would leave them on occasion, sometimes going for weeks. Dís, being a loyal and loving sister, assumed his absences were so long because work was difficult to come by. Now she was beginning to suspect he simply got himself turned around more often than he ever admitted.  
  
“I think that's the third time we passed that tree,” she observed, trying to infuse levity in her voice to keep her brother's hackles from raising at perceived criticism. “You wouldn't happen to have a map we could consult, by chance, do you?”  
  
Despite her would-be-casual tone (or perhaps because of it), Thorin frowned and muttered, “The wizard said head West on the road from Bree and we'd...stumble upon it.”  
  
'Stumble' was right enough, she supposed. The ponies' heads were drooping, they needed water and rest (the same wouldn't go amiss for two of the noble line of Durin either, but Dís tactfully did not think to mention it). Glancing up at the stars which were just becoming clear as the sky darkened, she commented aloud, “Well, we're definitely heading West. Once we reach the sea, will you own that we've overshot our destination some?”  
  
Thorin did not dignify that remark with a reply. They rode in silence for a time, but as the night became darker and the road did not slope gently down into a cozy valley as expected, Thorin finally said, “Next town we reach, we'll stop for an ale.” _And directions._ was the unspoken addendum that made Dis smile to herself and shake her head ruefully.  
  
They'd not had much in the way of refreshments since setting out from Dunland. It was not likely that the Company would leave without them, but it would hardly do to leave them waiting for days while their king supped and slept along the road. Thorin wouldn't have borne it in any case; reclaiming Erebor had been his fondest wish for most of his life and he was not about to delay their journey for the sake of a full night's sleep and a full belly.  
  
Nevertheless, he could not expect to face the trials that surely awaited him without any food and lodging, so it was with relief he heard his sister observe that she spied chimney smoke on the horizon. They came upon a homely village of wooden houses, large gardens and winding pathways. Few were about, given the lateness of the hour, but Dís's sharp eyes picked out a small figure ambling on a narrow road, large jug in hand.   
  
“We've found a hobbit anyway – or I think we have,” Dís said, noting the diminutive figure and large, bare feet. She couldn't recall ever seeing on in person, though she knew of their existence. Kept themselves to themselves in the civilized West, weren't much seen or talked about outside their homeland. Why the wizard Gandalf recommended one for their journey, she could not say and asking Thorin why he'd agreed to such a thing only resulted in tense shoulders and silence. Dís was wise enough not to mention it, but she knew that Thorin was in need of all the aid he could come by and if the wizard recommended taking a pair of tame squirrels along to act as scouts and look-outs, he would agree with minimal grumbling. It was a hard thing for a proud dwarf to admit he needed help.  
  
Thorin grunted in agreement and walked his pony alongside the little chap and inquired the way to a place called 'The Shire.' Once the gentlehobbit got over his shock at seeing a dwarf of all creatures, astride a pony, bedecked in furs, he replied that he could not rightly say the _way_ to the Shire.  
  
“And why not?” Thorin asked, what little patience he ever had quickly drying up over the tediousness of the interview.  
  
“Why, because you're _in_ the Shire, sir Dwarf.”  
  
Thorin threw a smug look to his sister as if to say, _See? I knew the way all along._ “Then could you tell me the way to a house of a Mr. Baggins? Quickly now, we need to make haste.”

“It's Bag End, you seek, is it?” The sweet smell of mead was on his breath and Dis could not but suppose he would not be so garralous and friendly if they'd not caught him coming back from the alehouse. “That's a charming house, built for Belladonna Took as a wedding present by old Bungo Baggins – though, you'll pardon me for saying so, everyone knew it was all her money what was spent. Had a pretty pile of it too, strange girl that one, always disappearing, but that's Tooks for you. All cotton between the ears. She settled down after they got married, had little Bilbo. Always said it was a shame they hadn't any more, but most folks reckoned she had her hands full with that one. Spitting image of Bungo, but, you know what they say about Tooks and fairies and when that lad was a wee mite he was the terror of Westfarthing, no two ways about that.”  
  
“So, the house is in Westfarthing?” Dís interjected, about as bored hearing of Hobbit genealogy as her brother looked. “And where are we, if you don't mind my asking?”  
  
“The house? Oh yes, Bag End, no number, but it's quite large, set into the hill, you can't miss it. My cousin just got a bit of coin off Mr. Baggins – Mr. Bilbo Baggins, that is, his father's passed now, rest his good soul. Turned out quite like his father as well, very respectable. Anyway, he painted the door just the bonniest shade of green - ”  
  
“Thank you,” Dís said as her brother urged his pony on. “So, just keep on to the west, then?”  
  
“West?” the hobbit asked, cocking his head up at her. “Oh, yes. Westfarthing. House in the hill. Is he expecting you? Only it is awfully close to suppertime -”  
  
But the dwarves were already on their way.  
  
It was not long before they came upon another little village, low houses, smokestacks and fences all around with the occasional goose or pig to be seen wandering about in a back garden, unattended. All the inhabitants seemed to be tucked cozily into their homes, despite being quite late, the smells of cooked meats and pies drifted out of chimneys and open windows as though supper was ready to be served. Dís found herself wishing they'd stopped for that ale after all...and she also noticed something else – or rather, that something they'd been told to expect was missing.  
  
“Didn't he say something about a hill?”  
  
Thorin too noted the lay of the land – yes, some bits rose higher than other bits, but there was nothing about them that fit the description of a 'hill' by dwarven standards. “If that halfling led us astray - ”  
  
“You'll do nothing because you don't know where to find him,” Dís interrupted him testily. How on earth did her brother expect to reclaim their home if he couldn't find his Company? And who's to say whether or not any of their friends or kinfolk found the burglar's house? They might even now be wandering around this little valley in the same predicament as they themselves were. The wizard said he would act as a guide since he was reputed to be a great friend of hobbits, but wizards were strange creatures, not much trusted by their kind. This Gandalf the Grey may well have lied and then where would they be?  
  
The notion of returning to the Blue Mountains, red-faced and ashamed before they even began was disheartening and Dís bit her tongue against the criticism she wanted to hail down on her brother. Once she'd eaten, she'd be in better spirits (and so would Thorin for that matter). It was only a matter of finding the thief's house – _Thief_.   
  
A shimmer of blue on top of a little mound caught her eye. Dís hard remarkably good eyes for a dwarf of her age, most of their kind had vision that was good for close work, shaping weapons and crafts, finding glimmers of precious metals in a dark mine, but she could still spy things at a distance that most missed. Unless she was much mistaken, a thief did indeed live in this village and was advertizing for work.  
  
“Thorin!” she whistled for her brother and gestured toward the little round door upon which the mark was set. “I think I found it.”

Her brother was at her side in a moment, frowning up at the house. “That's hardly a hill,” he said at last. “But I can't imagine there are two thieves about in this place. Come along.”  
  
They rode to the steps leading up to the door, freshly painted or not, one could hardly tell in the darkness and dismounted. “I'll play the sneak,” Dís said, dismounting and handing the reigns of her pony to her brother. No point alarming anyone if this was the wrong hobbit-hole, after all, though she could see a number of ponies making merry hell with the vegetation in the garden and two of them at least looked awfully familiar to her.  
  
Her heart was light when she peered in the windows and saw Dwalin's familiar broad back moving from one room to another. Dori, Nori, Ori...Balin, yes, and Oin, Gloin, Bombur, Bofur...she couldn't see Bifur from her vantage point, but no doubt the brothers brought their cousin along. Ever since he took that axe to the head, he needed some extra looking after. The sounds of song and cheer were muffled through the glass, but she smiled as a bowl flew by the window – Fili and Kili, safe and sound. She had all the faith in them in the world (most of the time) and her brother would not have wanted them along if they could not get themselves from the Blue Mountains to the Shire in one piece, but she was relieved to see them again all the same. She'd hardly been away from them since they were small and Dís was surprised by how much she missed their smiling faces and their mischief.  
  
“This is it,” she called down to Thorin. “They're all inside, doing the washing up. I'll tend to the ponies, you go on ahead.”


	3. Chapter 3

If Dís smiled to herself when she heard the sounds of merriment within the little cottage fade once her brother hammered on the door, no one but the ponies were privy to her mirth. Poor, distinguished old Thorin, burdened with rank and a seriousness that only cracked in close company. Not many of those dwarves would know of the hours he and Dwalin spent on all fours, playing ponies to her boys, telling them stories of Erebor and falling asleep with their little hands tangled in their braids and beards.  
  
Fewer still remembered her brother as he was before the last great clash of Orcs and Dwarves, tossing a young sister over his shoulder and making a dash away from another brother who gave chase, threatening to toss both of them in the nearest river. Reflecting back, they probably gave their mother apoplexy, running off like that and disappearing on her for hours at a time when she'd lost so much already. Ah, but how Thorin would laugh and to Dís her brother's smile was one of the dearest things in all the world, rarer and more precious than diamonds.  
  
Hopping the garden fence, where the makeshift paddock was assembled, Dís strode up to the front door which was in the process of being shut behind her brother. She stopped it with her hand and the talk within died away into a stunned silence. A few of the Company had enough wits about them to bow and mutter, “My Lady,” but most just stared in open-mouthed shock.  
  
Dwarrow-women were neither weak nor incapable, but their numbers were so few and births so relatively uncommon that most did not travel away from hearth and home simply because the potential harm to their race was unthinkable. Erebor was the exception to the rule and every wife or girl child who died on the road was mourned as though she were the mightiest warrior the world over. Unlike other races who celebrated the births of male children and merely viewed female offspring as another unwanted mouth to feed, the birth of a girl brought a household unimaginable joy. All children were valued among dwarrows, weddings and births were cause for the loudest, rowdiest, most joyful celebrations among their kind, but the birth of a girl was thought to be a blessing on the family, direct from Mahal, signaling favor and prosperity.  
  
When Dís was born, third child to a still young mother after two boys, there was feasting for days, gifts of jewels, furs and fine velvets, a king's ransom in gifts and well-wishes. Had the beast not sacked their home, she would like as not never have seen the world beyond the mountain, she certainly would not be standing in the foyer of a hobbit-hole, of all places, being stared at pop-eyed by her kinfolk and brother's subjects. Had the beast not...ah. But 'have-they-nots' were as worthless as pig iron in the hands of a first year apprentice and Dís had no use for them.  
  
“Evening,” she said briskly, getting an eyeful of the wizard her brother consulted whom she'd never met. Looked like someone's barmy old grandfather, but he was one of the few who wasn't looking at her as though she was out of place. Indeed, those blue eyes twinkled and he looking mighty pleased, as if he'd orchestrated her coming to begin with. Unsettled her a bit, those blue eyes that seemed to know more than the craggy old face let on.

“Ah, will your excellent sister be joining us?” the wizard asked, utterly delighted.  
  
“Sister?” The voice that squeaked that incredulous word could belong to no one but the hobbit. He was a little creature, even by dwarf standards, that short curly hair and those smooth cheeks were more fitting for a child of 30 – and, to speak truth, even babes of their race had more hair on their faces than this fair thing.  
  
Dís could hardly blame him for staring at her, she was appraising him as well, neither having seen the like of the other before. Those great big feet looked odd, odder still for seeing them by light. His shoulders were narrow, his skin unweathered and hands fine-boned, clearly never knowing a day's work. He seemed as though he'd be more at home in a shady hammock than a thieves' den and _this_ was their burglar? Did the wizard take them for fools?  
  
“Mr. Baggins, may I present Lady Sigdís, daughter of Thráin, sister of Thorin, our leader to whom you've already been introduced” the wizard said, though how he knew her name was a mystery. “My lady, Mr. Bilbo Baggins, our burglar.”  
  
The hobbit seemed to recollect his manners once he heard a proper introduction and he bobbed his head awkwardly. “Ah. Erm. Yes. Charmed. My lady.”  
  
Dís smiled briefly and acknowledged the halfling with a nod. What on earth had they missed? The little creature looked overwhelmed and exhausted, as though he'd been running for miles. It couldn't be that taxing to host supper for twelve, and she'd distinctly seen them taking care of the dishes through the window. If a little dinner party was enough to wear him out, there was no chance he'd survive on the road.  
  
That settled it; the wizard was having them on. Well, she'd play along then, for the time being. “Pleasure's all mine, Mr. Baggins.” Then, casting her eyes around the room, she asked, “Have you emptied the larder or is there some meat and ale yet left for weary travelers?”  
  
The room sprang to life once again, dwarves scrambling and tripping over one another in an effort to provide their king and princess with victuals. The hobbit just slumped against a wall, closing his eyes. Seemed an odd time and place for a nap, but then, Dís knew nothing of hobbits so she kept her commentary to herself.  
  
Her full attention was devoted to the two dwarflings in the corner who were the only ones standing stock-still, as though their feet were sunk in half a foot of mud. Dís had not seen them so still and silent in the whole of her life and momentarily feared the wizard had magicked them to be so. One of her brows rose when she caught sight of the clay pipe burning youngest son's hand.  
  
“That mine?” she asked, nodding to it. Kili blink and seemed to snap back to himself. “I'd wondered where that got to.” She gestured for it and he handed it over to her wordlessly.  
  
“Took it to remember you by,” Fili supplied, always the first one to stick his neck out when his brother got himself in a sticky situation.  
  
“Did he now?” Dís asked, smiling indulgently at her son who looked at Fili, confused, before he caught on to the attempted deception and nodded vigorously. “What a lovely sentiment. Well, as you won't have the chance to miss me, I suppose you'll have to content yourself with your own pipe, hmm?”  
  
Kili looked put-out only for a moment (his own pipe was porcelain, got off a peddler for a penny and worth exactly what he'd paid for it) before he smiled up at her in that eager, endearing way of his. “You mean, you _are_ joining us?”  
  
“What, you expected me to let you lads run off and have all the fun?” she asked, drawing her arms about her boys' shoulders. Both of them were shorter than her by a few inches, but they had time to shoot up...or not. Their father had been shorter than her, after all. “All my best company are contracted out to your uncle, I don't have anyone worth talking to in all the Blue Mountains.”

Kili laughed in delight, but Fili seemed less thrilled at the prospect of their mother joining them on this quest. Dís could understand and it wasn't that she thought her sons incompetent, they were fine young warriors when they stopped larking about, but another pair of eyes and arms would not go amiss. Especially, she reflected bitterly as her sons led her to the dining room, when there was no aid coming to them from the East.


	4. Chapter 4

Within minutes they were situated around the hobbit's table, she and Thorin with bowls of stew that seemed to come from nowhere. The rest of the company made a clean sweep of the pantry before their arrival, which was for the best. Their quest would be a long one and there was no sense in coming home to spoiled food at the end of it – if they were all destined to come home.   
  
Balin immediately started questioning Thorin about the tedious, ultimately pointless meeting. The journey to the Shire served to cool her brother's temper somewhat and Dís was pleased that he did not immediately stir everyone into a frenzy, cursing the name of Dáin Ironfoot. “They say this quest is ours and ours alone,” he replied to the inquiries quietly, as though there was a measure of dignity in Dáin's refusal to send even a small number of guards from the Iron Hills. Perhaps Thorin would learn diplomacy yet.  
  
“You're going on a quest?” the hobbit asked, his voice inquisitive. Dís wondered if everything he said sounded like a question, some quirk of hobbit-speech. She'd heard it said that everything dwarves spoke sounded like an order and that wasn't too far off the mark, in her experience.  
  
The wizard asked for light and explained their ultimate destination as though it was the first time the halfling was hearing about it. Dís kept her tongue, but found herself wondering exactly how much Gandalf told the would-be burglar about their intended journey. And what creature did not know of the Sack of Erebor? Their allies mourned for them and their enemies cheered and counted down the hours until the dragon abandoned the peak so that they might have a chance to claim the mountain and its treasures.  
  
If all was as Óin said, the dragon might be dead or journeyed on. They would not be the only souls interested in the treasure of the mountain and, despite her brother's birthright and their suffering, if others entered the mountain before their merry band of misfits there could be a battle at the end of their quest, one they might not survive if the Men and Elves of the nearby city and woodlands gathered their own armies. Bred to fight though they may be, what chance did a dozen or so dwarves have against armies?  
  
Then again, with fearsome lads like Ori about, what fear had they of any army – or dragon for that matter?  
  
“I'm not afraid!” he said, standing suddenly, full of youthful bravado that made Dís take a _long_ sip of ale to avoid laughing at the boy and embarrassing him. He was a dear little dwarfling and he had plenty of heart. He agreed to this quest where battle-seasoned warriors had not and he did not deserve to be laughed at. Anyway, his elder brother took it upon himself to cool his youthful outburst, tugging on his arm and bidding him keep his seat.  
  
Balin sighed and shook his head, “The task would be difficult enough with an army behind us, but we number just fourteen and not fourteen of the best nor brightest.”  
  
Dís had enough pride about her to take offense at that. “We're not _utterly_ incompetent, thank you.” Never mind getting lost (twice) in a few hundred acres of grassland and pleasant countryside. Their kind was more at home navigating mines and craggy mountaintops, their pre-quest journey was obviously a fluke.   
  
“We may be few in number,” Fili said passionately, “but we're fighters. All of us.” His eyes flickered involuntarily to his mother before settling on Balin again. “To the last Dwarf.”

Fighters was right. Dís never tested her skill against an orc pack or an army of encroaching goblins, but she'd put her axe to use against the occasional wolf who came too close to their home, and she fought different enemies. Poverty. Hunger. Grief. If this quest failed, she would lose everything and everyone she loved. She'd stand against a dozen fire-drakes to preserve what little she did have left and if they succeeded against all odds, it would be worth it, the years of death and wandering and mourning. If they restored Erebor, perhaps it would all mean something at last.  
  
“And you forget, we have a wizard in our company,” Kili added, eyes shining. “Gandalf will have killed _hundreds_ of dragons in his time!”  
  
Dís shot a bemused look at the rumpled old man. “Hundreds, eh?”  
  
“Oh, well, no, I wouldn't say - ”   
  
“How many, then?” Dori asked, his usual polite diffidence all but forgotten for the moment.  
  
“What?” the wizard looked as though he'd totally forgotten what they were talking about. Dís gave her brother a searching look. Where on earth had he found this creature? What on earth prompted him to put any trust at all in the daft old man?  
  
“How many dragons have you killed? Go on, give us a number.”  
  
“Are we sure he _is_ a wizard?” Dís nudged Bofur, who was seated to her right, and cast a suspicious look at Thorin. “Far as I can tell, the only magic he's worked has been to hoodwink my brother.” Thorin trusted no one easily, it was not the way of their kind and her brother was an especially stiff-necked Dwarf. Definitely not the sort to pick up barmy old men in pubs and yet...Gandalf.  
  
Bofur shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, but the reply was lost in the cacophony of sound bursting about them, some demanded the number of dragons the wizard had personally slain (and choice of weapon), others claiming that they shouldn't be so nosy as all that – but Thorin stood and spoke with such force they all lapsed into silence.  
  
"If we have read these signs, do you not think others will have read them too?" he asked rhetorically. "Rumors have begun to spread. The dragon Smaug has not been seen for sixty years. Eyes look East to the mountain, assessing, wondering, weighing the risk. Perhaps the vast wealth of our people now lies unprotected. Do we sit back while others claim what is rightfully ours, or do we seize this chance to take back Erebor?"  
  
As she heard her brother speak and, more to the point, watched the others _listen_ , truly listen to him with all their respect and attention, her worries about sleepy burglars and mad wizards left her. For whether or not they had Dáin's armies, a wizard's magic or a burglar's cunning, they had one thing none of the Men or Elves who might set greedy eyes upon Erebor could boast; a true King Under the Mountain.

When the others raised arms and mugs and voices in a cheer of triumph, Dís joined them, grinning like a fool. Across the table, she locked eyes with Dwalin, whose grin was invisible beneath his beard, but she knew from his eyes that his heart was set aflame by her brothers' words. What Dwarf of their number could not be moved by them? Erebor was a dim memory to her and a mere legend to her children, but it was their home and birthright. If Fate, strumpet though She was, smiled upon them, who among them could look down that narrow path to a mountain none of them had glimpsed in over a century and turn away?  
  
Balin, of course, tempered their enthusiasm with inconvenient facts. “You forget, the front gate is sealed. There is no way into the mountain.”  
  
Then the wizard did something that softened Dís's feelings toward him immensely after the day she'd just passed; he produced a map. Not just any map, a map written by their own ancient scribes, a key created by their own smiths which opened the secret door and would, if they were exceedingly lucky, grant them passage into the mountain. Her brother spoke for her when he demanded how the wizard came to possess such a thing.  
  
“It was given to me by your father, by Thráin,” the wizard explained. “For safekeeping. It is yours now.”  
  
The blood was pounding in her ears and Dís quite missed the murmuring voices around her, missed her sons glancing her way for approval when they spoke. What they saw was their mother turn pale in the candlelight as she stared at Gandalf without understanding. The wizard answered her brothers' question, but in so doing really said nothing at all. Where had he seen her father? How long had he been possessed of this map and key? _Where_ had the wizard come upon him, when he had not been seen by his own people for decades?  
  
Like Erebor, Thráin was someone she remembered but dimly and most of her memories were of a man nearly broken, so consumed by loss and grief that he was practically a stranger to her. Sometimes, in the dark silence of night, if she tried very hard to cast her mind back to her earliest years, there were memories of large, rough hands lifting her onto strong shoulders, a low voice murmuring words she barely understood. No one knew what had become of her father after he disappeared all those days ago. The rumors were that he was taken captive by orcs or some other foul race. Most assumed he was dead. All prayed that his death was quick.  
  
Dís did not much think on her father for her mind quickly turned bitter and undaughterly. He was a great warrior who loved his land and kingdom, but all she knew was the man so paralyzed by pain that he let his sons toil their youth away in sweat and blood, in trade and war while he withdrew from them all by inches every day. Those gentle hands and that kind voice mightn't even have been his; odds were just as good that they belonged to Thorin all along.  
  
Talk of burglars snapped her back to the moment; burglars, yes, the hobbit, she'd entirely forgotten he was there, so silent he'd been for so long. “I'm not a burglar,” the hobbit insisted. “I've never stolen a thing in my life.”  
  
Balin sighed, “I'm afraid I have to agree with Mr. Baggins. He's hardly burglar material.”  
  
“It's going to be a long, hard journey,” Dís pointed out. In a way, she was beginning to feel rather badly for Mr. Baggins. This wizard (if indeed, wizard he was and not just a mad old man with a staff) seemed to have got the better of the halfling as he'd gotten the better of her brother. “He won't fare well if he's never set a toe beyond the boundaries of his back garden.”  
  
“Aye,” Dwalin agreed, inclining his head toward Dís. “Just so. The wild is no place for gentle folk who can neither fight nor fend for themselves.”

Once again, sincere debate descended into arguing and pointless chatter.  
  
“He's a descent cook - ”  
  
“We've got Bombur for that.”  
  
“He said he's got skill with a conk hammer.”  
  
“He said _conkers_ , you idiot!”  
  
"Conkers? Good game, if you've got the nuts for it."  
  
"That joke wasn't funny the first time, Bofur!"  
  
“I once faced off an _enormous_ boar with a handful of nuts and my slingshot, scared him right off!”  
  
“Sure it did, Ori. Or that might've been Mother charging out behind you with a great - ”  
  
“ **ENOUGH!** ” All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room and for the second time that night, a group of fourteen argumentative dwarves was struck dumb. The wizard seemed to expand from his already great height until he engulfed the whole of Bag-End. Such power emanated from him that one could be forgiven for doubting whether there would _be_ a Bag-End when his outburst was through. “ **IF I SAY BILBO BAGGINS IS A BURGLAR, THEN A BURGLAR HE IS.** ”  
  
Dís's eyes went round as dinner plates then narrowed again as the wizard seemed to contract back into himself, once again the very picture of a harmless, slightly addled old man. She chanced a glance at her brother who looked entirely unruffled, but was clearly moved by Gandalf's display. As was she; no doubt in her mind that there was something uncanny about the creature, something not of this world. For the earth shifted for a moment and she glimpsed something beyond the face he presented to the world, something ancient and possessed of great power. This was a wizard, to be sure. How far that power would take them she could not say, but Dís was suddenly very pleased that he was on their side.  
  
“Give him the contract,” Thorin ordered over the halfling's protestations.   
  
The hobbit looked it over thoroughly, with an eye for detail that would satisfy any dwarf. Their legal writings were ponderous at best, but even though Dís personally knew Balin, she still read all the fine print before signing her name at the bottom. She would have signed it regardless of what it said, but it was in the nature of her race to know precisely what they were getting into before they put their signature to anything.  
  
“Funeral arrangements?” the hobbit asked, looking vaguely sick.  
“We can only ensure a pauper's burial, given our limited funds” Dís informed him, a touch of apology in her voice. She knew not what funeral customs were among Hobbits, but Dwarves took particular pride in the reverence paid to their dead, especially those fallen in battle. It pained her heart still that the dead of Azanulbizar were too many to receive a proper burial. Their corpses, including that of her beloved Frerin, were burned on a pyre, but their memory was assured to live on long after their bodies left this earth. “Now, if you've already got your own coffin, you can take it along if you provide your own means of transport.” Some among their own people did that, had coffins and tombs lovingly prepared to lay their bodies down when the time came. Apparently Hobbits were not long-term planners, by nature.  
  
“Coffin?” the look of illness slipped into one of incredulity. “No, well, _I_ haven't, no telling what Lobelia gets up to with her scheming – anyway, I could hardly transport such a thing.” His eyes scanned the contract again and he murmured as he read along, “...Present company shall not be liable for injuries inflicted by or sustained as a consequence thereof, including, but not limited to, lacerations, evisceration... _incineration?_ ”  
  
“Oh, aye, he'll melt the flesh off your bones in the blink of an eye,” Bofur said easily, and why should he not? It would be a quick death, no lingering when facing down dragon-fire. The kindly miner continued in that vein for a while, reassuring the hobbit that dragons were merely overgrown furnaces with wings.  
  
“Flash of light, searing pain, then poof! You're nothing more than a pile of ash!”  
  
“You won't have to worry about that coffin,” Dís added helpfully. It was all for naught; the hobbit fainted dead away regardless.  
  
“Very helpful,” Gandalf sighed.  
  
“I think I'll brew another pot of tea,” Dori said, getting up from his chair and heading for the kitchen.


	5. Chapter 5

The wizard roused Mr. Baggins, who retired to another room with his cup of tea, presumably needing a moment away from the dwarves who all but invaded his house. “So, he didn't know we were coming, then?” Dís asked Dwalin once the company was settled in around a cozy fire.  
  
“Seems not,” he said, taking a long drink of ale (he'd refused the tea in favor of another pint and Dís was happy to join him in that. “Thought the meal he had laid out when I got here was awfully meagre, but then, not all folk are used to feeding the likes of us.”  
  
“That's true enough,” Dís smiled at him. “Couldn't for the life of me understand why he was so put-out when we arrived. If a party of twelve strangers arrived on my doorstep demanding meat and grog, I'd have half a mind to turn them out.”  
  
“But you wouldn't,” the old warrior replied. “You're too good-hearted a lass for that.” His eyes slid toward Thorin, deep in a quiet conversation with Balin. “So. Lost twice.”  
  
“Twice,” Dís confirmed. “To be fair, it was just as much my fault as it was his, 'least the second bit. We were wandering around for ages looking for a hill – ran into another halfling one town over, he said the house was in a hill and you'd not call this a hill, would you?”  
  
“Not by my reckoning. Might be different for his kind.”  
  
“Likely is,” she agreed. “Where on earth did that wizard find him?”  
  
“Here, I'd wager,” Bofur said from where he sat, facing his cousin Bifur who was dead to the conversation about him. All his concentration seemed to be on his hands where he was whittling a strange little something from a block of wood. “Funny little creature, eh? And not half bad by my reckoning.”  
  
“Wager?” Nori, younger brother of Dori perked up at that word. He was a sly fellow, always in trouble with the law and escaping serious punishment by the skin of his teeth. His presence on this quest was an absolute mystery to Dís since, of all the plethora of words she would use to describe Nori, 'noble' was somewhere near the bottom, right after 'honest' and 'selfless.' Maybe he thought it was to do a favor to folks in a position to repay him when his luck ran out. “Now, there's an idea. Any coin on whether or no the halfing joins us tomorrow, lads and lady? Twelve for no.”  
  
“Ten that he doesn't,” Bombur said immediately. “I wouldn't, if I were him. Not a bad house, if you're a settled sort.”  
  
“Aw, come now, you're just impressed by the size of his pantry,” Bofur winked, nudging his brother in the side playfully. “So am I, come to that.” He was quiet a minute, then added thoughtfully. “You know, I think it'd be good fun if he came along. Five says he does.”  
  
“You're betting on your own wishes rather than what he's like to do,” Bombur shook his head.  
  
“Well, either way, either I'll get a bit of coin for being right or you'll get a bit of coin for being right and we'll split it regardless. Not a bad position to be in, eh Bifur?” His cousin glanced up at him and shook his head, though whether he'd been paying any mind to their conversation was a mystery.  
  
“I think he will come!” Ori said hopefully. “Eight that he will!”  
  
“You'll make no such bet,” Dori replied, shaking his head. “I hold your purse strings and I'm not going in on this foolish wagering for you.” To Nori he added, “Put me in for ten against.”  
  
“Well, this isn't fun at all,” Nori groused. “If we're right – which we are – we'll be splitting Bofur's five amongst ourselves.”  
  
“I think he'll come,” Kili replied. “Eight that he'll come. Who stays no to something like this?”  
  
“Hobbits, probably,” Fíli answered him. “Eight against.” Kíli shot his brother a betrayed look. “He swooned just _hearing_ about the dragon, do you suppose he'll have to nerve to take a look-round for him and see if the coast is clear?”  
  
“Seven against,” Dwalin said, no further explanation given.  
  
“Ten against,” Óin and Glóin said together.  
  
It was probably undignified for daughters of the House of Durin to make wagers over the bravery of hobbits in their sitting rooms, helping herself to their beer and pipe-weed, but Dís was not your typical noblewoman. “He didn't toss you all out on your backsides when you turned up,” she said, ignoring Glóin's muttered, As if he could. There was something about the way the halfling inquired about their quest that made her think there was more too him than met the eye. He was curious, yes and seemed almost impressed. “Fifteen that he comes. That'll sweeten the pot for some of you.”

Nori nodded happily and tapped his head as though he made a note of it in his mind. Fíli looked entirely put out and asked the older dwarf if he might change his wager.  
  
“Too late,” Nori said with a wicked smile. “You've made your bed and by my reckoning you'll be counting your winnings tomorrow.”  
  
“Put 'em to good use,” Bofur advised, a twinkle in his eye. “Buy your brother a better pipe so he'll not be stealing your ma's!”  
  
Everyone laughed good naturedly at that, including Kíli who nevertheless insisted that _borrowing_ was quite a different thing than stealing.  
  
“What are our brothers talking about in there?” Dís wondered aloud to Dwalin, lighting her (admittedly superior) pipe.  
  
“If I know my brother, he'll be trying to talk Thorin out of all this,” he replied, bending so that Dís could you her own match to light his pipe for him.  
  
“You don't mean to tell me Balin's lost his nerve?” she asked incredulously. “I don't believe it's possible.”  
  
“It's not his nerves he's worried for,” Dwalin said, but Thorin and Balin joined them at that moment for a smoke and he went to his king's side, leaving Dís staring after him wondering what on earth he could mean.  
  
Taking a long draw on her pipe, she felt inexplicably anxious and looked around for something to occupy her hands and mind. The room was clean enough, the dishes were washed...her eyes fell on her youngest son and she called him to her. “Did your brother braid your hair this morning?” she asked, casting a critical eye over the limp strands hanging down his back. Like mirror images, her boys, Kíli's hair was not as thick as Fili's and since he was small, she'd been the only one with finger's dextrous enough to arrange it.  
  
“He didn't do that badly,” Kíli said by way of defense. “It was a day of hard riding. _We_ wanted to get here on time.” He added the last with one of his teasing smiles. One thing Dís would miss when his beard grew in properly (if he gave up the bow and _allowed_ his beard to grow in properly) was seeing the whole of that lovely smile. She could never help smiling back, even when he was a wee dwarfling up to his neck in trouble.  
  
“Sit,” she said, gesturing to a footstool in front of her. She carded her fingers through his hair, shifting her pipe to one side of her mouth. Deftly, she unclasped the hair ornament wrought of her own hands and fixed in her sons' hair days ago. Unspeakable relief filled her heart now that she was with them. Dís was a practical dwarf, she was under no illusions that her presence would lessen the danger of their quest, but to be able to touch her sons, to fight alongside them and do her damnedest to keep them safe meant the world to her. Thorin was a loving uncle and the only thing like a father her sons knew. She knew they loved him and he loved them more than the waking world, but she loved them just as fiercely and would do all she could to have all of them hale and whole at the end of this.  
  
Absently she hummed as she braided her youngest son's hair, an old tune written in exile and oft-sung at their cradle by herself or their uncle. It was well known to all of their company who suffered the loss of Erebor and passed on to their kin. The others joined in her wordless song, quietly at first, then growing in volume until her chest felt the reverberations of a dozen deep dwarf voices. Then her brother began to sing.

No one knew the name of the dwarf from whose pain that tune originated. Some claimed it was Dís's own mother and she could well believe it. It was a marching song, a lullabye, an anthem and a promise. Dwarves had songs for marriage, feasting, drinking, fighting and, of course, death. Great deeds were most often retold through song, so the young would not forget the old and those who could not read would not forget their history. This was a different sort of song, a song of great deeds not yet done, but that must be done. They would not wander forever, the song promised. In one age or another, the time would come when all would be right with the world again.  
  
Yes, Dís could believe the song was her mother's invention, though, if the queen invented the words she took the secret with her to her grave.  
  
Even those who had never seen Erebor knew the words of the song by heart. It had a special significance for those who could recall fleeing the mountain, dwarves who still woke from a sound slumber blinded by dragon-fire the scent of smoke and scalded flesh in their nostrils. The Sack of Erebor were some of her earliest and strongest memories, their sturdy walls crumbling around them as the mountain itself seemed to shake with the fury of the dragon's wrath. All around were screams and shouts, panic vivid on the faces of those she knew and loved. Her mother was the one to carry her from the mountain, running for both their lives, screaming the names of her brothers until her voice was hoarse.  
  
Frerin was on a hunt, only meant to be observing since he was still so young he could not shoulder a spear. Dwalin, their most loyal cousin, saw the youngest prince to safety before he returned to face the beast. It was to no avail, Smaug the Terrible burst their doors and drove them out amid the burning stalls and trees that flamed like so much kindling. Thorin was the hero of the day, saving Balin and their grandfather from dying among the jewels he valued more than his own life. _That_ was not a story he shared easily, Dís only pieced it together after many years, listening to her brother re-live that awful day in his sleep.  
  
Each Dwarf in that room knew someone who had perished either at Erebor or during the course of their long exile. This quest was personal to each of them, but no one felt the aching need of reclamation and revenge more than Thorin. It consumed his thoughts and danced just on the edge of his mind even during times of happiness. Perhaps that was what Balin was worried about, that Thorin's all-consuming passion for revenge and return would engulf them all in its flames.  
  
The mood was much more somber now as the final notes faded into the night and, slowly, the Company made their excuses and found a chair, a windowsill, or a warm rug to curl up on to sleep. Fili and Kili squeeze together into a rather large armchair, a tangle of limbs and dropped off almost immediately. Dís did her best when raising her boys to preserve their untroubled sleep for as long as she could; it was far too late to do so for her brother.

Dís tried to sooth her brother's mind as best she could; taking up piecework at the forge so he would not have to worry about money, singing songs in the evening to calm his heart, aching as it did with the thousand little injuries the world dealt him daily. Teasing him and making him smile as if they were any other brother and sister, not heirs to a scattered people, a crownless king and a still young widow. She liked to think she succeeded more often than not. Their race was renowned for strength and they were exemplary figures in that regard. In-bred or born of necessity, the fact was that Thorin needed to be strong for their people and Dís needed to be strong for Thorin. In many regards, she was all he had left.  
  
“Rumor has it we are down one burglar,” she said quietly to him when only sounds from the house were the crackling of the fire and the snores of their fellows. Thorin was sitting up at the dining room table, studying the map as if he could divine its secrets through sheer force of will.  
  
“Mmm,” he replied, which was not a reply at all. “So it would seem.”  
  
“Aren't you pleased I'm coming along?” she teased, tilting her head to catch his eye. “If I wasn't, you'd only be thirteen and that's terrible unlucky.”  
  
“Mmm.”  
  
“Are you going to bed?”  
  
“Mmm.”  
  
“Fine weather we're having.”  
  
“Mmm.”  
  
“I was thinking today I might shave my beard and take up with an Elf.”  
  
“Mm – what?” Thorin blinked and stared at her a moment in disbelief before he saw his sister's laughing eyes and recognized the joke for what it was. Chuckling wearily, he passed a hand over his eyes and admitted, “It is late and we have a long journey ahead of us. I suppose I should sleep.”  
  
Dís grinned at her brother wickedly, “I know you all too well.” When he did not rise, she came close to him and lay a hand under his arm. “Come along, up you get, you're worse than the lads.”  
  
Thorin rose and shook his head in the manner of someone dislodging unpleasant thoughts. Apropos of nothing he looked at her and said, “You think we're doing the right thing.” It was not a question.  
  
“Of course I do,” she replied immediately. Erebor was their home and rightful place. Their quest aimed to reclaim what was theirs. It was as simple as that. Where ever Thorin bid her follow there she would be. And if he did not bid her, she would come anyway, brave anything for her brother-king who she loved so dearly. “Now, sleep. Unless you prefer to make a bed of the table, I think Mr. Baggins has another patch of floor left that will serve you well.”  
  
Thorin smiled briefly, eyes flickering back to the map. He rolled it up and tucked it within his coat where it rested beside the key Gandalf had given him. Both of them stood in silence a moment before Dís ventured to ask, “Did the wizard say how it was he acquired those things?”  
  
“No,” her brother replied. “Nor do I believe he will.” There was a flickering in his eyes. It may have been the dying light of the fire playing tricks, but Dís thought she saw a glimmer of something unfamiliar in Thorin's expression. Apprehension. _Nor do I want to be told,_ his eyes seemed to say and she spoke no more of it that night.


	6. Chapter 6

They were up and away from the Shire by first light. They took the last of the hobbit's rolls for their breakfast and Dís enjoyed a bit of light-hearted ribbing from her comrades about her ill-fated bet.  
  
“Looks like her ladyship is going lose her money,” Nori whispered to his younger brother in a voice loud enough to startle the birds from their nests.  
  
“Now, we aren't out of the Shire just yet,” the wizard said airily who had himself placed a large bet on the chance that Bilbo Baggins would indeed turn up. Nori was so giddy at the prospect of nearly-legitimately making money that he practically fell off his horse as he counted the wagers.  
  
“Indeed not, as a matter of fact, I think I recognize that tree,” Dís remarked, shooting Thorin a sly look which he studiously ignored.  
  
It was not long, however, before shouts began to sound out of the countryside, faintly at first, but with increasing volume. Dís turned to look behind her and laughed out loud when she saw their host of the evening previous running full speed at them, the contract trailing behind him like a flag. Nori looked crestfallen.  
  
“Well, don't lose heart,” Bofur grinned at him. “Did you nick some of his ma's plates? Maybe he's just come to reclaim them.”  
  
But even if Nori had made off with the crockery, that was not why Bilbo Baggins was running after them. No indeed, it was just as Gandalf predicted, they had not lost their burglar after all. Balin seemed pleased (did he too have money riding on this?), but his sweet smile was probably like sunshine on a rainy day for the halfling, who likely had no idea what the sour expressions and grumbling of many of the company signified. Poor sod might get the impression that they didn't like him.  
  
Thorin certainly seemed to be on the verge of extreme dislike when the hobbit's lack of experience with riding meant such slow going (plus two instances where Dwalin and Óin had to go galloping after him when his pony startled and bolted) that darkness fell upon them miles outside the town of Bree.  
  
“Perhaps we should have another evening of sleep and drink before setting out in earnest?” Gandalf suggested, casting an eye at the hobbit. Bilbo stopped sneezing hours ago and did not complain of lost pocket handkerchiefs, but he did look peaked.  
  
Dís slowed her pony, but Thorin did not moderate his speed and she could swear she saw the very fur lining his coat bristle at the wizard's suggestion. “I've no intention to stop in Bree tonight. I'd hoped to be well out of this place by sundown.”  
  
Thorin was stubborn as dwarves came and especially ill-disposed toward his set plans changing on him. Given the meandering path his life had taken, he drew strength from stability. Just because he was capable of living an uncertain existence did not mean he preferred it; just the opposite, most days.  
  
“Sundown's long past,” Balin sighed. It was the strangest thing, but Balin's sighs, frequent and soft-sounding, could alter the course of a person's decision making more effectively than shouts and fists.  
  
“We don't have the funds to spend on overpriced ale and lice-infected beds,” Thorin continued doggedly. The hobbit looked offended at that; several of his cousins found work at Bree in years past, Brandybucks, mostly, but they were good sorts and would definitely _not_ permit a lice infestation. Not even a single bedbug would escape a hobbit housekeeper, ta very much.  
  
“Oh, I don't know,” Dís added. “I've come into a bit of coin recently, I could be persuaded to spend it on a few flagons of mead and warm beds for the night.” The look in Thorin's eyes tells her he does not care for her to spend the company's money on unnecessary comforts, but the look she gave him was equally steely. She knew her brother would ride, walk or crawl to Erebor without stopping for food or drink if he was permitted to and she had no intention of allowing it. Besides, Ori, Nori, Bombur and Bilbo were already turning their ponies toward the inn at a quick trot; the hobbit's riding improved tremendously when the promise of a hot meal awaited him.  
  
“I don't see as it makes much difference,” Bofur supplied in an effort to get Thorin to buck up. “We either sleep here or we make camp somewhere close by. What's five miles, more or less?”  
  
Thorin did not answer. It was five miles closer to Erebor. After so many decades of hopeless wandering, they were finally on their way and no one seemed to understand how important that was, save himself. The fire in his veins did not burn within their hearts, he noted, as he saw Fili and Kili practically falling over one another to make it inside first. Bofur was not of Durin's Folk; neither was his brother or his cousin. Balin seemed impossibly content to remain in the Blue Mountains indefinitely, his nephews had never even _seen_ Erebor and his sister, who he might expect to be his staunchest supporter, was willing to throw away valuable gold on trifles.  
  
Dwalin put a hand on his shoulder and steered him toward the inn. “Come along,” he said without preamble. “You look as if you need a drink.”  
  
“What I _need_ is a company that does not turn soft the moment we set out,” Thorin replied testily, stopping just short of shaking his friend's hand off.  
  
“I don't think they're turning soft,” Balin offered diplomatically. “I think they just want a drink.”  
  
Thorin gave Balin an irritated look. “And when we’re miles from anywhere, our provisions have all but run out and they’re hungry, weary and wounded. What then?”  
  
“They’ll press on,” Dwalin said simply. “Like you do.” Their years of trial hardened Thorin. He was hard on himself and expected nothing less than his own best effort from everyone he knew. It a rare quality of leadership, expecting nothing from his fellows that he was not willing to do himself, but sometimes Thorin gave too much of himself, took too much on, felt the weight of his duty too keenly.  
  
Dís appeared at her brother’s side and took his arm, favoring him with a sweet smile. “Aye, the road ahead will be a rough one. To my thinking there’s no sense in turning your nose up at a few comforts when they’re laid out before you, eh?”  
  
Thorin Oakenshield was a hard dwarf, but if he had a soft spot, it was for his family. With Dwalin on one side and Dís on the other, cajoling him out of a foul temper, he could not stay annoyed for long. “Perhaps I could do with a drink,” he admitted.  
  
Dwalin clapped him on the back. “That’s more like it,” he said approvingly and together they entered The Prancing Pony. The other members of the company were running up a decent bar tab already, Dís saw and was pleased. It was always best to set out in good spirits, to take advantages of nights of ease that could be remembered and laughed about if and when their adventure soured.  
  
Even their itchy-nosed burglar seemed happy at last, now that he was off his pony; Daisy they’d given him. Dís wondered if he mightn’t have an easier time on Myrtle, who was a bit older and better behaved. The company wasted no time starting their meal, everyone had an ale or two in hand and looked jolly as could be. Dís made her way to the bar and ordered a round for herself and the others who’d come in behind her. The serving maid looked warily to a Man who could only be the landlord. He nodded and said, “Payment up front, as with the others. And if it’s rooms you seek, I’ll see you pay for that as well.”  
  
Dís reached deep in her pockets and laid her coins down on the table without a word of complaint, though a frown tugged at her lips. It was the way in some roadside inns to insist Dwarves pay before a dram of ale touched their lips. Their reputation among Men was in a sorry state most places. Dís could not deny that their race had its fair share of thieves and swindlers (she hoped Dori kept an eye on his younger brother when his hands strayed close to the silverware), but no more than any other.  
  
The landlord counted the money twice before he pocketed it with a satisfied grunt and signaled the maid to bring the drinks. She was a slim, tall thing, like most women of the race of Men and she stared at Dís just a beat longer than necessary before she hurried off to fetch their order.  
  
Dís bit back a chuckle; call her a liar or a thief and she’d spit in your eye, but mistake her for a male of her race and she could hardly stop herself laughing. When she travelled, most eyes passed over her without a second glance, but every so often a girl like that one would give her a second look before a blush painted her cheek for fancying one such as that. Her travelling coat obscured her form sufficiently that she could pass as a lad, though no dwarrow-man would find anything particularly masculine about her. Her skin was smoother and bones sharper than theirs and though her form was compact and hard with muscle, she had the softness of hips and a bosom their menfolk lacked.  
  
It was the beard that confounded most Men. They preferred their women smooth as an infant’s backside. Dís could not understand that for the life of her what man wouldn’t find a woman’s features more alluring when framed by a fine, thick growth of hair to tug and kiss under the sheets. Her own beard, short-cut as her brother’s, did not invite the eager fingers and lips of dwarrow-men to touch and caress. It was a symbol of mourning, a tribute to those she lost and a sign that she was not open to courting another whose loss would break her heart again.  
  
The serving maid brought a round of brown ale to her and Dís thanked her for her pains with a smile and a wink; just because she wasn’t courting didn’t mean she couldn’t have fun flirting, especially with a wench who did not stoke her fires any. The girl turned red as a fresh-picked tomato and scurried away. Dwalin, who’d watched the whole exchange silently, huffed and took his ale from the bar.  
  
“Plan on leaving a trail of lovesick lassies behind you as we travel?”  
  
“Ah, you’ve found me out,” Dís shook her head ruefully, carrying a pint back to their table for her brother.  
  
“Sharp as a tack, me,” Dwalin teased her, taking a long swig from his tankard. “Now I know why you were so eager we stop here for the night. Downright shameful.”  
  
“Shame? Me? Perish the thought.”  
  
“Seems I rightly know where Fíli and Kíli get their nonsense. And here I thought it was your brother’s legacy all these years.”  
  
It was not Thorin of whom they spoke and though Dís smiled, her heart grew heavy with memories, even all these years later. Frerin had the brightest eyes and quickest laugh of any she knew; most said Kíli took after her, some said he favored Thorin but those closest to them never commented on any family resemblance for they knew he was the spitting image of her long-dead brother. Kíli had his father’s dark eyes, but everything else about him, from his sweet smile and soft hair to the sound of his laughter - _especially_ the sound of his laughter - was Frerin, through and through.  
  
She still bore Dáin Ironfoot a grudge for ordering the bodies of the Azanulbizar dead to be burned. It was the right of Thorin and herself to wash his body and braid his fine hair one more time before laying him to rest in stone, his sword and shield beside him, not throw him atop a great blaze as though he were rubbish. Yes, she knew why her cousin made that decision, in her mind she understood there was no other option but her heart would never completely forgive him for it.  
  
Suddenly those cheery dark eyes were looking up into hers and all her melancholy thoughts vanished in an instant. “That for me?” Kíili asked eagerly, stretching out a hand for the untouched tankard she held. “You shouldn’t have.”  
  
“I didn’t,” his mother replied, holding the ale well away from his clutching hands. “It’s Thorin’s. You’ve two working legs, get your own, laddie my love.”  
  
“I can take it to him,” Fíili offered, stretching out his own hand. Her older son had a streak of mischief in him just as wide as his brother’s, only he was slightly cleverer in its carrying out. “T’won’t be no trouble.”  
  
“Aye and when you’ve drunk half of it on your way to his chair and he thinks the ostler’s paid him an insult, then where will we be?” She pushed her way through them and shook her head in mock-disappointment. “You lads ought to know by now, you can’t put anything past me. I know all your tricks.”  
  
They were a merrier group now that everyone had warm beer and hot battered fish to eat. Their burglar and Ori were making short work of a bushel of salty fried potatoes. Gandalf mysteriously vanished between the door and the table, but after a few rounds, the location of their wizard was not the foremost concern on anyone's mind. Some of the ribaldry Thorin's arrival dampened the previous night returned with a vengeance and it wasn't long before Bofur produced his clarinet from nowhere and offered to take requests.  
  
Seeing the serving maid pass by their table for no tangible reason save curiosity, Dís was seized by some of that impulsiveness that ran rampant in the line of Durin and called out, “There's always,'The Lusty Young Smith,' that's always a good choice.”  
  
A groan issued forth from the dwarf on her right. As frequent as were Balin's sighs, so too were Dwalin's groans. “No.”  
  
“Whyever not?” Dís asked with a devious look on her face. “Reminds you of someone you know, does it?”  
  
Dwalin cuffed her on the back of the head in the playful chiding manner of an older brother. It was his duty, since Thorin was seated too far from her to do it himself. Dís punched the warrior on the arm and amended her request. “Very well, since some folks object, how about 'Courtin' in the Kitchen'?” A cry of agreement went up among her fellows and Bofur obediently played the pitch on his pipe while his brother Bombur supplied the words.  
  
“Come single belle and beau,  
Unto me pay attention!  
Don't ever fall in love, it's a cruel, wicked invention  
For once I fell in love with a maiden so bewitchin'  
A stout comely lass out of me Lord Linnar's kitchen.”  
  
All except their hobbit, who would not have much chance to hear the folk songs of the Blue Mountains, were intimately acquainted with the tune and bellowed out the chorus loudy, stomping and clapping with such vigor that the rafters of the homely inn vibrated slightly. “With me toora loora lie, me toora loora laddie! Toora loora lie, toora loora laddie!”  
  
Nori, who did not have as fine a voice as Bofur or Bombur but was such a rogue that he could carry the spirit of the tune off well enough took over the second verse.  
  
“At the age of seventy, I was 'prenticed to a grocer  
Not far from Kheledûl, where me lovely used to go, sir.  
Her manners were sublime, she set me heart a-twitchin'  
And she invited me for a hooley in the kitchen!”  
  
The song went on to describe an encounter that went about as badly as one might expect, the young lad, after taking special care with his beard, met his young lady below stairs, the master came home and caught them and the girl protested, claiming she'd caught him in an act of burglary.  
  
The final, woeful verse was Bofur's who'd left off playing since the company was beating out a rhythm so strongly there was no need for his pipe.  
  
“I said she did invite me, but she gave a flat denial.  
For assault she did indict me and I was sent to trial!  
She swore I robbed the house, in spite of all her screechin'  
And I got six months hard for me courtin' in the kitchen!”  
  
Even the hobbit joined in on the final chorus, flushed and cheery looking after his beer and meal. “D'you know any songs, Bilbo?” Bofur asked, offering him his pipe.  
  
The halfling shook his head, holding his hands flat away from him, “Oh, no. I mean, I sing some, but I don't play at all.”  
  
“Shame,” the miner replied, tucking his pipe back in his pocket. “I've a hankering to hear some hobbit songs just now.”  
  
“I haven't,” the ostler groused from across the room where he was cleaning mugs with a rag. “My cat could play a fiddle better than that lot.”  
  
Bilbo looked affronted, but then another mug of ale found its way under his nose and he chose to confine his offended grumbling to the rim of his drink. Glóin looked dumbfounded. “Are you just going to take that, lad?”  
  
The hobbit looked a bit confused and glanced behind him, clearly thinking he was not the one the dwarf meant to address. “Pardon me?”  
  
“He just insulted your people! Surely you're not going to let such a thing pass without challenging him.”  
  
The halfling shrugged, suddenly very interested in the bubbles bursting on the surface of his mug. “He's entitled to his opinion.”  
  
The dwarves stared at him, uncomprehending. “But he said his cat can play better than your folk!” Kíli repeated, clearly thinking Mr. Baggins did not properly hear the landlord. “Don't you hobbits have any pride?”  
  
Bilbo shrugged one again, sinking down in his seat and muttered, “Not generally, no.”  
  
“Are you scared of him?” Fíli asked. Cowardice was the only reason he could come up with for backing down from a fight. The little fellow told his uncle the night previous that he had no skill with axes and swords, he likely made no use of his fists either. When Dwarves got to drinking their bodies ached for a dance or a fight and Fíli was no exception in this. The legs of his chair scrapped the floor as he stood up. “I could fight him for you if you like.”  
  
“No! No, no, no!” Bilbo said, catching hold of the young dwarf's sleeve. “Erm, thank you all the same, but I'd really rather you didn't.”  
  
“Sit down, Fíli. No one is fighting the halfling's battles,” Thorin commanded. His heir took his seat once more, landing heavily in it with a disappointed look on his face, as though he'd been denied a treat.  
  
“But this isn't a battle!” Bilbo protested. “He doesn't like hobbit songs...or perhaps his cat really does have a singular talent with a bow, either way, it isn't anything worth fighting over.”  
  
To Dwarves there is very little _not_ worth fighting over. The only one who did not regard Bilbo with a look of utter incomprehension was Bifur, who was in the midst of one of his strange spells where he seemed to see and hear no one. Their burglar seemed to grow even smaller than he was under their scrutiny and excused himself for a moment.  
  
“These Hobbits are strange creatures,” Óin observed at last, to a chorus of “Ayes” and baffled nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's not a Tolkien re-telling without some singing! The song I used is "Courtin' in the Kitchen," I tried to find an attribution, but it's usually just listed as a traditional Irish folk song. I changed some of the lyrics so they'd be more appropriate for dwarves (since James Nesbitt played Bofur with an Irish accent - presumably Bombur and Bifur have one too, I thought it was fitting). There are several different versions out there, the one I'm most familiar with is sung by the Irish Tenors on their _Ellis Island_ album.


	7. Chapter 7

The innkeeper was carrying on again, even more irritated than he was discussing the musical merits of hobbits. “And that’s enough for you, sir. If Dwarves have decency enough to pay for my grog, I expect the same from Men.” His commentary was address to a rough-looking Man halfway in his cups.  
  
Nori couldn’t help overhearing and chortled into his mead. “Aye, fine upstanding folk, we are.”  
  
“Some of us are,” Dori replied darkly, shooting his younger brother a disapproving look. Most of Dori’s communication with others came in the form of disapproving looks, all differing slightly so suit the occasion. “And put those spoons back where you found them.”  
  
Dís signaled to the barmaid she’d been making sport with all evening to bring them another round and the lass made her way back to the bar, watched closely by the Man who’d produced a few tarnished brass coins to pay for his meal. He caught the girl by her slender white wrist. “That lot bothering you?” he growled.  
  
The girl shook her head. “No trouble at all,” she twisted her arm and he let her go after a beat, eyes sliding back to the Dwarves and lingering on Dís with particular dislike. After another beer and a few more minutes of silent staring, the Man stood and stalked over to their table, giving Dís what he thought was a good hard shove on the arm. She didn’t sway, but looked at him with an expression of bored disdain.  
  
“Lost your way from your stool, have you?” she asked, her voice cool as the first frost of winter.  
  
“I don’t like the way you’re making eyes at our women,” he slurred.  
  
“ _Your_ women?” she quirked an eyebrow and snorted into her tankard. “Didn’t know Men bought and sold their ladyfolk like chattel.”  
  
“You’d know nothing about it,” he muttered darkly, taking in the whole company with an anger borne of drink and dark days. “Your kind don’t have no womenfolk, so’s I hear. Born out of the rocks and stones, so you steal our girls away for trysts and worse.”  
  
Dís laughed out loud. This wasn’t the first ignorant Man she’d heard prating on about dwarves stealing women/babies/pigs, but he was the most sincere. “If your lassies seek companionship with the likes of me, I’d say that’s more of a comment on the quality of your menfolk than any sly doings on my part.”  
  
Her companions laughed uproariously, which naturally only inflamed the Man. Even stony-faced Thorin’s mouth was twisted in a wry smile. He’d taken enough abuse at the hands of Men when they were poor and wandering that even his kingly heart could not but be pleased when they got a bit of their own back.  
  
It took a moment for the Man to realize he’d been insulted, but a light went on behind his eyes and he bellowed, “You _dare_ \- “  
  
“Take it outside!” the ostler shouted, having anticipated something like this as soon as the first dwarf set foot in his inn.

Liquor humming a sweet tune in her veins, Dis got to her feet and half the table rose to follow, itching for a fight since their burglar refused to challenge the landlord. “Knock his teeth in!” Nori shouted encouragingly.  
  
“Go for the legs, it’s where they’re weakest!” Glóin added helpfully.  
  
Dis shot them a wry look over her shoulder. Though she’d no war experience to speak of she had trained with weapons and a half-grown dwarfling could easily take on a full-grown Man. Ori and Kíliwere practically bouncing up and down in their excitement, but Fíli remained at the table.  
  
“Aren’t you coming to watch?” Kíli asked his brother.  
  
Fíli, who was feeling a little cowed by his uncle's earlier reprimand, shook his head. “Go on, I’ve seen Mam best a Man before,” he grinned and nodded his brother along. “If they take wagers, put me down for ten that he goes down in one blow.”  
  
Their little group was barely out the door before the Man took a swing at Dis’s head and missed by a mile. She dealt him a quick jab in his gut and he stumbled; that was the trouble with Men, no challenge. Dwarves needed to pull their punches to avoid their fists going clean through them. It was one thing to get a reprimand for fighting and quite another to be clapped in irons for murder. Dis was willing to have a bit of fun with him before the night was through for she was just as much a Dwarf as the others and liked some sport with her ale, but the Man fell backward over something in the road and his head hit the ground with an awful smack.  
  
"Why, it's our burglar getting into the fray at last!" Bofur laughed before he could stop himself.  
  
None were more surprised than Bilbo Baggins when something tall and heavy toppled over him onto the ground. The hobbit had the good sense to duck when he saw a large dark shape coming toward him and was unharmed, but it seemed the Man was not so lucky.  
  
“Goodness!” Bilbo yelped, hovering anxiously over the unmoving form. “Is he...is he...?” Óin, the healer of the group crouched down beside the unconscious drunkard and gave him the once-over.  
  
“Not dead,” he confirmed, noting the steady rise and fall of the chest and the lack of blood or shattered bones. He’d seen enough fatal head injuries in his day to know what he was talking about. “Just knocked out.”  
  
“Men,” Dís sighed discontentedly. “They’re so bloody fragile.”  
  
The little halfling looked anxiously at the dwarrow-woman and Bofur did the same. It was considered rude to take out the chosen combatant of another who was not injured in some way. There was a disappointed look on their Lady’s face that she’d only been able to land one good punch before the Man crumpled like a leaf and Bilbo caught his breath when she stared at him for a long moment.  
  
Her arm moved back and the hobbit flinched, thinking he was about the join the fellow on the ground, but Dís threw her head back and laughed. “Ah, Bilbo Baggins,” she said, clapping him on the back and sending him sprawling. “We’ll make a warrior of you, yet!”  
  
Later that night, once the company were settled in their rooms, it occurred to Kíli to ask his brother when he'd seen Mam get the better of a Man in combat. He'd seen her on a hunt and sparring with her children, brother and cousins countless times, but he never saw her quarrel with any Man before.  
  
“It was fifteen years ago, at least,” Fíli informed him in a hushed voice; families were rooming together and he did not want his mother and uncle overhearing their conversation. Mam told him after it happened to keep quiet about it since his uncle would be needlessly upset and his brother didn't need to know every damn thing that happened at the forge. “I'd just been apprenticed, you were still at home, I think, taking lessons with Balin probably.”

Fíli's work was not yet good enough for sale. Thorin would look it over with a critical eye, inform him what improvements were to be made and when he was through whatever misshapen thing his nephew'd labored on would be melted down and begun again. It was approaching midday, his arms were sore and his mother took pity on him, poured him a drink of water and told him to rest a minute his uncle was off collecting their meal. His mother, Fíli noticed admiringly as she took up her hammer and approached the anvil, had not stopped to sit yet. Two Men approached their stall, travelers by the look of them. There was dust from the road four inches deep on the hems of their coats and mud lay thick on their boots. Drying her hands on her apron, Dís approached them, tilting her head back so she could look in their eyes. “What can I do for you?” she asked.  
  
The Men looked at her, at first seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Dwarrow smiths were a dime a dozen in the Blue Mountains and were reckoned to be the most skilled at the craft, even moreso than Men and (some said) Elves. A second glance however, revealed the clear complexion of this one, the wide hips emphasized by the ties of the leather apron and the hint of a bosom beneath the open neck of the tunic. They gaped for a moment and one nudged the other and muttered, “I thought they were a myth. I thought they sprung out of the rocks of the mountains.”  
  
Dís was used to dealing with curious Men from their time in exile. It did not wound her in any way to be mistaken for a lad or be thought of as a curiosity (and an ugly one, at that). She always joked afterward that she could say a thing or two about their short, scraggly hair, the fuzz on their faces that they called beards or their lanky bodies, weak as weeds compared to her own stout frame, but she refrained because she knew her manners and wanted to keep food on their table besides.  
  
Dwarves were fighters but they weren't without sense. If it was a choice between starving and taking a stand for honor's sake, sometimes pride went by the wayside. Rather than losing her temper she took a look at the carving knives one held in his hands and asked, “Will you be needing those sharpened?” Perhaps if they were reminded of their purpose they'd stop goggling at her like idiots.  
  
No such luck, these were the special sort of idiots that couldn't take a hint. “And it's got a beard! I can't believe - ”  
  
“D'you reckon it'd be pretty without it?”  
  
“Can't hardly say, isn't natural to find such as _that_ pretty. Like shepherds what does it with the beasts of the fields.”  
  
The shorter of the two smiled and displayed an impressive number of black and broken teeth. “How 'bout _those_ , eh?” he asked, gesturing lewdly toward Dís's chest. Seeing this gross insult, Fíli was up and out of his chair, despite his sore back and arms. One of the Man's grubby paws reached out toward his mother as he said, “No beast's got - ” but one of Dís's broad square hands caught him about the wrist before he could touch her and his voice trailed off into a cry of agony.  
  
“Feel that?” she asked, low and deadly. She twisted his arm and he was on his knees, looking in her eyes. “That'd be your bones grinding one on top of the other. I could tighten my hand and crush 'em into a powder, but I'll give you a choice. You can either do your business here and stop mouthing off or you're free to go and find another smithy whose looks you like better. What'll it be?”  
  
“What'd they do?” Kíli asked, as though the answer wasn't obvious.  
  
“Took off on their horses, never to return,” Fíli concluded predictably. “She said she was sorry for the lost businesses, but some folks got to be taught.” He was sworn to secrecy since Mam didn't want him mouthing off at customers every time they looked at him crossways and he kept his word until tonight. Maybe she'd never seen battle, but from that day on Fíli never doubted his mother had the heart of a warrior.


	8. Chapter 8

The next day saw the Company rising with the dawn, sleepy, but so bolstered by the night of merry-making that they made a good journey East. To say that Thorin Oakenshield was satisfied when they finally set up camp, miles from the towns of Men and Hobbits, would be an overstatement. Thorin was rarely satisfied by anything, but he was easy enough in mind that when Gloin lit the fires that would cook their evening meal, he actually sat and made ready to smoke his pipe. It promised to be relaxing, uneventful night, and would have been had Kíli not chosen a most inopportune time to make sport of their burglar.

Dís was helping Bombur and Dori get their meal together while the rest of the company sat down for a catnap or a smoke and was only half-listening when Bilbo got skittish on account of some noise or other in the dark. Predictable as rain on Durin's Day, her lads took the opportunity to make trouble. She did not need to look at them or listen closely to their words to know her sons were teasing. Kíli’s voice took on that too-serious tone dwarflings got when they told wild tales to scare one another and pass the winter nights. The hobbit, naturally, did not know them as well as she did and was immediately taken in - and so too was another who could not help tensing at the mention of orcs.  
  
“You think that’s funny, do you?” Thorin demanded, rounding the corner from where he was resting, his voice full of quiet fury. His shoulders were painfully stiff and his mouth was a hard line beneath his beard. “You think a night raid by orcs is a joke?”  
  
Kíli's face fell at his uncle's approach. He was unaware that he and his brother had an audience, save the hobbit. It was a stupid, careless comment, but he did not realize exactly how stupid and thoughtless it was until this moment. Beside him, Fíli’s mouth went so dry he couldn’t speak. Their company was half comprised of the heroes of Azanulbizar who would likewise find no humor in a cry of ‘Orcs!’ from impetuous dwarflings.  
  
“We didn’t mean anything by it,” Kíli mumbled, finding his voice before his brother. The look of guilt on his face at angering his uncle would ordinarily have Thorin waving off whatever wrong he'd done, but the insult in this was so great, he spared no sympathy for the young dwarf.  
  
His mother, meanwhile, laid down her carving knife and walked over to the scene on the edge of the firelight, frowning just as her brother did. “Of course you didn’t,” Thorin replied bitterly. “You know nothing of the world.” He swept away from them, outside the light of the fire. His nephews exchanged a worried look; both knew they needed to do something to apologize, but neither had any idea how to go about it. Then Dís’s shadow fell over them and they looked up at her with identical expressions of panic.  
  
If there was anything that frightened them more as dwarflings than their uncle’s anger, it was their mother’s disappointment. The line of Durin felt strongly, tempers flared daily, siblings squabbled among themselves, but all was quickly forgiven. Anger could be dismissed and even laughed over, but knowing that you’d let down a friend or a family member could eat you away with guilt until you knew you made amends. And Fíli and Kíli had some atoning to do before they would be absolved for that jest.  
  
They made as if to rise, but Dís raised a hand to stop them and shook her head. Without another word, she followed her brother into the darkness as Balin spun them a tale of heroics amid slaughter in an effort to assuage their guilt and remind them of the respect owed their king. He was clever that way and Dís left her sons in his capable hands while she tended to her brother.

Balin's version of the tale of Thorin’s bravery and triumph in the Battle of Azanulbizar always stopped just before he reached the end. The proper end, as Thorin saw it. The slaying of the Pale Orc may have been his proudest moment in that bloodbath (if killing the _thing_ that desecrated his grandfather’s body could be called ‘proud’ rather than ‘necessary’), but it was hardly his strongest memory of that day. The sight of his grandfather’s head tossed aside like a flawed emerald would stay with him until the day he passed away from this earth. So too would the sound of a voice weakly calling out from nearby.  
  
As he stood upon the hilltop, surrounded by the dead and dying, his eyes desperately scanned the battlefield hoping to see a tall, boyishly slim, dark-haired figure among the dazed victors. Frerin was nearly barred from combat because of his youth, but he had trained for war as hard as any of their warriors. Only the night before the great battle, he declared on his honor that he would not see his father, grandfather and brother fight against their enemy while he remained behind. When they retook Erebor, Frerin added, all bluster, he would not want folk on the lookout for weakness in the line of Durin claiming one of the young princes shied away from battle. Foolishly, filled with love and pride for his brother’s strength of spirit, Thorin argued on his behalf. In his heart, as they armored themselves and Frerin smiled one of his radiant smiles, the last he saw, Thorin vowed that they would stand side by side in the throne room one day, proud warriors both, like their father and grandfather before them.  
  
That day, pictured so clearly in his mind’s eye, would never come. Instead he saw his brother lying only yards from him, trying to speak Thorin’s name and choking on his own blood. The look in those blue eyes, always bright and laughing before, was not the grim satisfaction of a warrior who laid his life down for his people and his kingdom. It was the fear of a boy dying too young and desperately seeking comfort. Thorin cradled his brother in his arms as he breathed his last, too horror-struck even to weep.  
  
Balin was the one to gently remove Frerin from his bloodless arms. Was it hours after the battle or mere minutes after he found his brother? Thorin had no idea, his head was too clouded with impotent rage and unceasing sorrow to even hear the old dwarf tell him to take his brother’s shield and armor because the bodies had to be burned. To bury them all with the honor they deserved would take years. And their enemy would prey upon their grief.  
  
Frerin had a small throwing knife still tucked in a gauntlet when he died. If he had been quicker getting it out, it may have saved him, but like as not he would have fallen all the same. Thorin removed that from him too and cut his beard there on the battlefield. For his brother. For his grandfather. Later, for his father, who was as dead to him as any of the others.  
  
Thorin shed no tears that day, but his sister wept for both of them. Her fists added bruises to his chest when he returned to the healer’s tents with their brother’s arms and armor. There would be no burial, he told her. No chance to make ready Frerin’s body, sing over it, see him one last time before he was sealed away. They were already preparing the pyres.  
  
 _That_ was what his sister-sons mocked so casually. The loss of thousands of good souls beneath the spears and swords of their enemy. The loss of a great-grandfather who would have cherished them and an uncle they would have loved as wholly and energetically as he would have loved them.  
  
 _No sound, just lots of blood,_ Kíli said, ghoulishly. He was only half-right. There was no silence on the battlefield, between the noise of the fray and the wails and roars of sorrow that came after, but there was a great deal of blood.

“You’re right,” his sister’s soft voice startled him from his reverie. She’d come to stand alongside him, though she was not looking at him, just staring out into the nothingness as he was, likely seeing the killing fields, just as he did. Watching a great people consumed by fire for the second time in their lives. “They know not of what they speak. We’ve kept the worst from them, for better or ill.”  
  
Balin’s stories often ended in the middle. At the end of a great battle, before the great mourning that inevitably followed. Theirs was a warlike race, death was ever at their heels. But tales of combat made for better stories than the weaving of shrouds. And funerals were never sung of in the mead halls.  
  
“It was in poor taste,” Thorin said at last. What he said was so inadequate in expressing what he felt, but he never needed to waste words on Dís; she always understood.  
  
Nodding she agreed, “Very poor taste. On a very sore subject. But what a blessing that we’ve raised them unafraid and laughing all the same, hmm?”  
  
In spite of himself, Thorin could not disagree. Both lads had something of Frerin's spirit in them. Laughing and unafraid. Against all odds, they continued. Endured and thrived. He was conscious of all eyes on him when the two of them returned to the campfire and his nephew's seemed cowed. Thorin would not have them in awe of him. Birthright aside, he often did not feel worthy of anyone's praise, not when he failed so many in his life, time and again. Grandfather. Father. Brother.  
  
And yet, in the face of those young, reckless dwarves he saw them all again. They would endure. And whatever his personal misgivings, Thorin would see them through to the end of this quest. After answering one of the hobbit's inane questions, he sat down between them and took up his pipe as the others went about preparing their evening meal. Though he was not entirely sanguine, the message was clear to his sister-sons, _You are forgiven._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My confusion about dates for the Sack of Erebor relative to the Battle of Azanulbizar in the film, combined with the fact that I have no idea how old Thorin is supposed to be in the movie version serve to make my timeline of events super-fuzzy, so I apologize if that's jarring for anyone. In my headcanon, Dís doesn't marry until after well after the battle and its aftermath influences her choice of husband as we'll see later. I hope you've enjoyed this installment of Wild Geese: Brooding Thorin Edition.


	9. Chapter 9

The road they traveled toward the Misty Mountains led them further and further from the towns of Men. The days of riding were long and hot as summer waned and Thorin desired them to stock up on provisions one last time before they reached the mountains where few made their dwellings. Everyone agreed that would be for the best, and to Bilbo’s great satisfaction, they stopped for the day in a pleasant meadow beside a stream before the sun was at its peak.  
  
“Too hot for the ponies,” Bofur told him, when he inquired why their leader, who drove them with such singular intensity, would order a halt so early in the day. Bofur, in addition to Balin, had become his unofficial guides on their journey and though Bilbo did not quite have the measure of his dwarrow companions yet, he found their friendliness a comfort. The older dwarf had a fatherly way about him and was a mentor to all, but the cheerful miner seemed to take a shine to Bilbo that the hobbit did not understand, but was grateful for all the same. “‘Sides, we need a bit of time to ourselves to work if we’re to trade for meat and gold in the next town we happen upon.”  
  
“Trade?” Bilbo asked, watching Bofur unwrap his scarf and settle down on an obliging patch of grass. The Dwarves were seasoned travelers and carried little with them past necessaries on their quest - not one spare pocket handkerchief to be found - and he did not know that anything save their weapons could be traded. Not that they’d part with their weapons for all the world.

  
“Aye,” Bofur said patiently, removing a whittling knife and a block of wood from one of his many pockets. “Toys, mostly. It’s why Thorin let meself and me kin along on our adventure, eh, Bombur?”  
  
The red-bearded dwarf smiled and shook his head. “Let's see now. I can cook, Bifur can craft...bless me beard, I can't say why _you’re_ along at all."

"Must be for me good looks," Bofur flashed his teeth and stroked his mustache and the brothers chuckled together.

"If there’s anything you’ll be wanting cleaned, take it off," Bombur advised. "Dori’s taking up a collection.” He gave his brother a once over and his thick fingers reached for his hat, but Bofur pulled the flaps down and ducked out of Bombur's reach.  
  
As if on cue, Dori’s voice called out, “Togs off, then! There’s a perfectly good river for doing the washing up, no excuses! Fíli! Kíli! _Hand_ them to me, I’m not your maidservant who’ll go fetching them up off the ground for you - Ori, _stop_ , they can pick up after themselves, they’ll never learn otherwise.”  
  
Fíli and Kíli were making their way to the river for a swim, shedding layers as they went. Nori and Dwalin seemed to have the same idea, only they went about it in a more sedate manner. Ori stopped picking up after the brothers when his brother told him to leave it, looking slightly at a loss until he spied Bofur and Bilbo sitting on the grass. “Do you need any mending done?” he asked them. “I’m fairly good with a needle, Mister Bilbo.”  
  
Some of the buttons on Bilbo’s waistcoat were hanging a little loosely now that he thought of it, so he shucked it off and handed it to the young dwarf with a grateful smile. “Thank you very much, Ori, I appreciate that.”  
  
Ori smiled back, pleased to be of use. “And I’ll wash your coat for you, if you’d like,” he added, bending to pick up Bilbo’s dusty red jacket before the hobbit could protest that it really wasn’t necessary. His coat was looking dingier than ever he’d seen it and if the lad wanted to provide the service, Bilbo was glad to let him. The sunshine was not too hot now that he’d removed some layers and he thought he might follow the example of his fellow travelers and go wading in the water. Once they were finished, he decided. Fíli and Kíli had challenged Dwalin and Nori to some sort of shoving game that involved the shovers sitting on their partner’s shoulders. The day was so pleasant now that the hobbit thought he might have a lie down and rest for a while on the soft grass.  
  
A shadow fell over him and Bilbo opened one eye to see Bifur settle down next to Bofur. Bilbo gulped and considered moving away. Bifur was the strangest of his company of Dwarves by far. The slight of the axe sticking out of his head turned Bilbo’s stomach early on in their journey and he was usually so strange and silent it was off-putting.  
  
“Oh!” Bilbo exclaimed, scrambling up a bit and considering finding a new resting spot. “Erm. Hello.”  
  
Bofur smiled at him kindly. “You mustn't mind if our Bifur don't say much. That's,” he knocked on his own forehead in the spot where the axe was embedded in his cousin's, “made him forget his Common Speech. Understands just fine, mind, and he's a good listener...most of the time.”

The other dwarf was not paying them much mind. Sometimes, Bilbo noticed, he seemed almost dazed, confused, maybe, but he was not confused at the moment. His attention was taken up by Dís who was approaching them, whetstone in hand. Bifur was not silent now now either, he shook his head and muttered some gobbledygook that she seemed to understand.  
  
“It isn’t any trouble at all!” she was saying. “It’ll take five minutes.” Bilbo noticed that as Dís spoke, she was making the oddest series of gestures with her hands. Rapidly, but deliberately he saw her run the index finger of her right hand over the top of her left. Then she held both hands flat away from her and brushed the fingers of her right hand against the backs of the fingers of her left hand. Bifur shook his head again, waving his own hands in front of his face quickly brushing his fingers together.  
  
Dís put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow at him, “Do you doubt my skill, sir?”  
  
Bifur looked almost alarmed and made some violent slashing motion that caused Bilbo to jump and Bofur to laugh. “Ah, she’s got you there. Go on, no use working with dull knives for the sake of your pride.”  
  
Bifur made a series of gestures that Bilbo could not follow before he handed his tools over to Dís who smiled and said, “I thought you’d come round to my way of thinking.”  
  
The dwarrow-woman took a set near Bilbo and set about sharpening the knives. She’d tossed aside her traveling coat and outer layers and was wearing a simple tunic and trousers, as the others wore. She tucked her dark hair behind her large round ears so it would not hang over her shoulders as she worked. Within minutes she held a knife up in the sun, squinting at it before nodding to herself. “There you are,” she said, tossing it to Bifur who caught it deftly by the hilt. “Good as new, in spite of all your bellyaching.”  
  
The dwarf brought a hand to his mouth and moved it away, prompting Dís to incline her head toward his and respond, “You’re very welcome.”  
  
Bilbo looked between the two of them uncomprehending. It was clear there was a conversation he was missing half of, but he did not want to comment as it seemed somehow rude. The Tookish part of him was just _bursting_ with curiosity, so he said the first thing that came into his mind. “You’re toy makers by trade? I thought you were miners.”  
  
Bombur shrugged his heavy shoulders and replied, “Little o’this, little o’that. Whatever brings the coin in, eh? Bifur’s the one with all the talent in the family, aren’t you, cousin?” Bifur tilted his head to the side, but did not look up. All his concentration seemed focused on the piece of wood he was carving.  
  
“He is,” Bofur nodded. “Folks come from miles around in the springtime, when the weather’s fair and you can make a profit in a stall most days, just for Bifur’s toys.”  
  
“Made a pair of oliphants for Fíli and Kíli...had to be at least seventy-five...no, seventy-six years ago,” Dís recalled. “You’d swear they were about to rear back and trumpet they looked so life-like. Still got ‘em too. That’s fine craftsmanship, there. And he made quite the menagerie for Bombur’s lot as well.”  
  
“Always had a knack for carving animals,” Bombur stated, swelling with pride.  
  
“You have children?” Bilbo asked. Aside from Dís, he did not know any of the Dwarves had children - before he _met_ these Dwarves, he did not think they did have children. Legend was that they sprang out of the ground fully formed after landslides when rocks cracked open. Someone once, his mother, perhaps, told him that was stuff and nonsense, but rumors would persist where facts were scarce.  
  
Their cook nodded, a smile lighting his whole face. “Oh aye, a few.”

“A _few_!” Bofur cried out, as though that was the best joke he’d heard all day. “Brother, you have a _brood_.”  
  
“A troop!” Óin called out from the shade of a nearby tree.  
  
“An army!” Dís declared. “ _Ten_ children, Mr. Baggins. Ten children in seventy years! I know families who’ve had fewer in three generations, never mind seventy years. And four of them daughters! You Broadbeams are uncanny.”  
  
“Must be something in the water,” Glóin agreed, coming to sit down in their little group. He had been resting under the same tree as his brother, but found himself drawn away by the discussion of children. “My Hervor and I have one, a son, but I couldn’t be prouder.”  
  
Bifur muttered something that made Bofur nudge him in the arm and hush him. “Now, now, don’t let’s rob Bilbo of the chance to hear the tale of Gimli, fiercest, handsomest and most intelligent dwarfling north of Rohan!”  
  
Hobbits, being so fond of their large families, did have a habit of going on about their children to a degree other races might find cloying. (He could name least four families with ten or more children who lived in Westfarthing alone and was not as in awe of Bombur’s number of offspring was not strange at all to him.) As a bachelor, Bilbo was always on the receiving end of parental boasting and quite used to it by this point in his life. He schooled his face into a look of polite attention and said he would be delighted to hear all about Gimli.  
  
Dís took that as her cue to leave. Gimli was a good lad who was decently skilled with an axe, no doubt about it, but Gloin could spin tales of his son’s talents until nightfall and she would rather her time be engaged...anywhere else, honestly. She laid the rest of Bifur’s carving knives beside him and made some excuse about having a wash before she strode quickly toward the river. Nori’s hair had fallen out of its careful arrangement and he was chatting with his younger brother while Dori kept a watchful eye on the two of them.  
  
Dwalin was up and out of the river and deep in conversation with Thorin and Balin. Dís stamped down a jolt of disappointment that he’d put his tunic back on; she was looking forward to getting an eyeful of a certain half-clad, soaking warrior.  
  
All that former talk of children made her wonder. Hadn’t her own two troublemakers been with Nori and Dwalin when they went for a swim?  
  
Her query was not destined to be long unanswered. Two blurry figures, water dripping from their hair and beards ran up to her on either side and enveloped her in cold, damp embraces before they ran off laughing. A grin flitted over Dís’s face before she twisted her face into an expression of false fury and roared, “Oh, this is _war_!”  
  
One problem with having two mischievous boys in her charge was one never knew what way to chase, given that they could each run in different directions. Fíli was less light of foot than Kíli, but Kíli made the mistake of running toward the river...ah, fatal mistake. Dís took off running with a merry war-cry and Kíli soon realized he’d made a serious tactical error.  
  
He raised his hands in supplication, but it was far too late for surrender. Dís tackled him to the ground, Kíli laughing all the while, trying to roll away and failing miserably. Dwarves grew stronger and tougher as they aged and he was simply no match for his mother, especially when he wasn’t _really_ trying. Within seconds she not only had him pinned, she lifted him bodily from the ground and tossed him into the lake with a satisfying splash.  
  
Kíli surfaced, hair plastered to his face, flailing his arms dramatically and shouting, “Oh, I’m drowned! Brother! Defend me!” and he threw himself back beneath the water, this time managing to partially soak Ori and his mending.  
  
With a battle cry of his own Fíli pounced onto his mother, arms round her neck, tugging at her braids, shouting, “Revenge! Revenge for the Line of Durin!”

Fíli was no longer the little dwarfling who traveled about the Blue Mountains in a sling on his mother’s back. Her eldest was nearly full grown and heavy, so Dís used his momentum against him, sending them both crashing into the water. They both popped out of the water greeted by a most welcome noise neither of them had heard since before their quest began; the sound of Thorin Oakenshield doubled over with laughter.  
  
“Did my nephews get the better of you, sister?” he asked, crouching by the water’s edge.  
  
Dís grinned up at him, tossing her long, wet hair out of her face. “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made in the heat of battle. I’m proud of my conduct.”  
  
“You fought well,” he acknowledged, inclining his head toward her. Dís was overwhelmed by the very immature, but entirely _sisterly_ urge to reach forward, grab her brother by the shoulders and drag him into the water to join them. Yet they were no longer dwarflings and taking their king by surprise like that might cause him to lose face in front of the company and they couldn’t have that. So, the direct approach was out, but subterfuge was always an option.  
  
“Care to join me for round two?” she asked, looking at her sons. Kíli was already on Fíli’s shoulders and shouting for a bout of wrestling. Thorin glanced over his shoulder at their group of carvers, but Dís correctly observed, “They’ll be at it for hours. Take a chance to have a bit of a wash.”  
  
“Come on, Uncle!” Fíli shouted encouragingly. It was a rare lapse, usually in the presence of the company, he was ‘Thorin’ at all times. Yet most of their fellows were otherwise engaged and it had been ages since their little family had time alone together. “Unless you’re afraid after the routing we gave Mam!”  
  
“Can’t say no to a challenge like that,” Dwalin observed over Thorin’s head. “Someone’s got to teach the lad to respect his elders.”  
  
And that was how Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain became engaged in a very unkingly game of chicken in a shallow river, on the road to Erebor. He and his sister managed to put up quite a fight against his heirs and would have won every bout, had his sister-sons not called in Dwalin for aid. Balin kept score, but both Dís and Thorin swore he was showing a familial bias. Thorin could never forget his purpose of their quest, it sat heavily on his mind as a crown might on the head of a proper king, but for that afternoon, at least, his burden was lightened and the path he trod seemed less dark than in former days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the last chapter, which got a little heavy, I needed to write something lovely. I can't resist the chance to show some Company bonding even if people are sticking to their little kinship cliques. My very, very crappy attempt at writing some iglishmêk was based entirely on my very, very limited knowledge of American Sign Language. Basically Dís was telling Bifur it would be easy for her to sharpen his knives for him, he asked her not to worry about it and he thanked her when she was done. Should have been pretty obvious from context clues, but I thought I'd clarify in case anyone was wondering. 
> 
> I really wanted Bofur or Dís to teach Bilbo a sign or two and they might do that later, but I think right now even though he's getting chummier with the Dwarves, he's still not at 'one of us' level yet, so they're not going to unlock much of their culture for him. I think I remember reading (maybe in the Esquire profiles?) that Bombur has something like 14 kids, but I decided they weren't all born by the time The Hobbit takes place. Also, Fíli and Kíli are clearly proto-Merry and Pippin. Discuss.


	10. Chapter 10

After days of sunshine and steady travel, it was only logical that rain would come eventually, but it did not follow that the Dwarves would bear the change in their fortunes with nary a grumble. The water poured down in sheets, limiting their visibility and causing the pony's hooves to slide in the mud and grass. Dís put her hood up, for all the good it did her. After several minutes' travel it was wet through and water was dripping down her face, soaking her beard and continuing still lower down her neck and chest.  
  
Everyone was equally uncomfortable, but some bore their burdens a little less vocally than others. Dori, bless him, was a very vocal dwarf.  
  
“Mister Gandalf,” he appealed to the wizard who at least had a broad-brimmed hat to keep his person dry. “Can't you do something about this deluge?”  
  
That would be dead useful and because it would be useful Dís was not at all surprised when the wizard said he could do nothing about the bad weather. What the range of his powers were was unknown, but thus far he'd only demonstrated the ability to become very loud very quickly and to bugger off when the Company settled in for the night.  
  
Beside her, Bofur dumped an accumulation of water out of the bowl of his pipe. “Might ask him if he's wizard enough to keep your pipe lit for you,” Dís leaned over and muttered .  
  
Bofur smiled and placed the stem back between his teeth. “No matter,” he said carelessly. “I ran out of leaf in the last town we passed through, s'just habit now.”  
  
Dís frowned at him. “Did you? I've a bit I can spare when this wet lets up, just ask when you want a smoke. Why did you not buy any when we had the chance? Who knows how long it's going to be before we pass another market again?”  
  
The miner plucked his hat off his head, wringing the sodden flaps out before placing it securely back on, “Figured it wasn't proper to spend me coin on weed – now, if m'lady insisted, well, that would've been quite a different matter.”  
  
“Ah, so this is my fault, is it?” Dís teased, but her heart was touched. Their race was rumored to be selfish, just as like to take a hard line in money matters with friends as with enemies and while she would not deny that they could be shrewd, it did not follow that they did not have among them folks with large hearts. Bofur, for instance, was one of the most sweet natured fellows she'd encountered. He and his brother made a point of welcoming the refugees from Erebor when they arrived in the Blue Mountains at a time when many of their kin and neighbors looked on them with thinly-veiled suspicion.  
  
They were not obvious about it, nor cloying, but they would nod or wish you good day in the street where some looked the other way. They bought cloth from the merchants who had goods to sell, told the young folk where the best mead in town could be got and made faces at dwarflings to distract them from fussing when their mothers and grandmothers lingered at stalls in the market. Dís became friendly with them early on, but that was only partially due to Bombur and Bofur's cordiality. In those days, there was a golden-haired lad with a smile like the sun who tagged along with them and insisted they make themselves regular patrons of her brother's forge.  
  
In an innermost corner of her heart, she sometimes wondered whether or not they would have done well to stay as they were. Those were good years, happy years for the most part. Even when times were lean, they had friends enough to bolster their spirits and get through the bad times. There was music and firelight and companions whose value was dearer to her than jewels.  
  
It was borderline treason to think such things, she supposed. This was their ancestral home and birthright. The mountain was _theirs_ and theirs alone. The quest was right and just, but here in the rain she could not help wishing all those she loved were back in the Ered Luin, warm before a fireplace with the scent of pipe smoke and the sound of laughter filling the house.

But ahead of her rode her brother, soaked to the skin as they were, yet he was uncomplaining and his gaze was fixed ever forward. Thorin would not be at peace until he set his eyes on Erebor again. That was reason enough to clear the dust of nostalgia from her mind and press on.  
  
The sky cleared, their clothes dried and they made camp. Fíli and Kíli were charged with looking after the ponies and Dís immediately thought that was going to end poorly. Give them something to do where they had a task to accomplish and all would be well, but neither of her lads had a spirit made for idleness (what Dwarrow did?) and watching seventeen mounts munching on grass would bore them and they'd find some way of distracting themselves...no doubt about it, Thorin hadn't thought that one through.  
  
She was about to tell her brother that she'd be happy to watch the ponies since her boys would surely manage to raise more hell in that simple matter than they could doing something more difficult, like lighting a fire, but it seemed another was questioning Thorin's judgment and beat her to him.  
  
When the wizard stormed away, she immediately marched for her brother who looked vexed, as he often did following an exchange with Gandalf. “What did you say to him?” she asked, her tone more accusatory than may have been strictly helpful.  
  
“The wizard has no right to make such demands of me, he goes too far,” her brother replied, marching off in the opposite direction.  
  
“What demands?” Dís inquired. She looked backward to see if there was time to stop the wizard – perhaps he stopped when the halfling called for him – and try to reach an accord, but Gandalf was nowhere to be seen. Suppressing a sigh, she followed Thorin, cursing stubborn Dwarves and unimpressive magic folk alike. “What did you quarrel about?”  
  
“He insists that we apply to the Elves for aid.” The word 'Elves' he spat like a curse.  
  
“Why would he do that?” Dís asked incredulously. “To see us humiliated? Surely he knows they will refuse, as ever they have refused our people when we were in need.” What Elves fought alongside them when the Orcs overran Moria? What Elf took arms to stand against the dragon which made its home in their treasure room, scant miles from their precious, thrice-damned forest? In time gone by Dwarves and Elves, if not friends, were cordial enough, but the hearts of the people of the Lonely Mountain were forever hardened against Elvenkind for their cowardice and apathy.  
  
Thorin grunted in agreement. “Gandalf is full of love for the Elves who likely never paid him any insult. He is mistaken if he believes they would show us the same respect. If he would see me crawl on my belly before them, baring my neck and grovelling like some cur, he knows not the pride of Durin's line.” Finally Thorin ceased walking, realizing he had no destination in mind and removed the map from where it was tucked close to his heart, brandishing it before his sister. “He claims his Lord Elrond will decipher this map. That we have no choice.”  
  
Few things grated on her brother more than having no choice and no options. He'd much of hopelessness and would not be forced into anything when he could claim leadership. Dís did not try to take the map from him, knowing her eyes were as blind to its secrets as his. “Well, I do not know of any Lord Elrond, but if he is hewn from the same rock as King Thranduil of Greenwood, he'll be of no use to us whatsoever.”  
  
Nodding, Thorin replaced the map and replied, “My point exactly.”  
  
It all made sense, why the wizard got his dander up about it was a mystery...unless... “That might be what you meant,” Dís said slowly, stroking her beard thoughtfully. “But is that what you _said_?”  
  
Her brother seemed ready to assure that he had said all of those things and it made no difference, but thought better of it on reflection. “Maybe not those words, no.”  
  
“Ah,” she sighed, all comprehension. “Right, then. Well, hopefully he'll come back after he's had his sulk.”  
  
“He told me that I cleave too much to the past,” Thorin said, half to himself. “I would ask him to tell me what I have that is my own besides the past.”

In that and that alone, Dís found herself in agreement with the wizard, if not for the same reasons. She would argue that Thorin clung not to the past as much as he did to regret. If she let him, he would stay up nights playing over the long days and years since they were driven from their home, wondering what he might have done different. If he changed an action of his on a given day, would they have come to the Blue Mountains sooner? Would they have had more to eat one winter? Would one life have been saved? Would a hundred lives have been saved? There were no easy answers to those questions, but Thorin would continue to ask them until he worked himself into a pique.  
  
It was her responsibility to help him see beyond all that, if only briefly. “And so you shall,” she replied, placing a hand on his arm. “When he returns, make all the inquiries of him that you want, but now, come and sit for a while, hmm?” Looking back over her shoulder to their friends on the horizon, she added, “If we go much farther, they'll think you've changed your mind about making camp and are off to Erebor without them.”  
  
The wizard did not return before nightfall, but Thorin's humor was the better for it. Dwalin drew him into a game of cards with Nori whose deck remained remarkably dry in the downpour. Dís sat by them, drawing half her entertainment from the game itself and the other half trying to make out when Nori was having one over on them.  
  
“There's no use,” Dori called to them, washing out his bowl of stew nearby. “He hasn't played an honest game of cards since he was a wee thing. I'd no sooner taught him to tell a king from a knave that he was marking up his own deck to cheat me.”  
  
“It's not my fault you're so easily fooled,” Nori shot back. “Ori, stop breathing down my neck, would you? Haven't you anything better to do?”  
  
Evidently not for his younger brother continued to peer over his shoulder and squint at Nori's hand. “How'd you get two? I thought there was only one ace of spades in a deck.”  
  
“Ach!” Glóin threw his cards in the dirt and rose from the ground. “That's time wasted!”  
  
Dwalin gave him a speculative look. “And just what else did you plan to do to occupy yourself this evening?”  
  
“Any of you have money riding on this?” Balin asked curiously.  
  
“Not a brass penny,” Thorin replied immediately. “Money on a card game with that one? We're not complete fools.”  
  
Nori grumbled something about nosy brothers and folks not having any sense of fun and collected his cards, wiping the dirt off of Glóin's hand with particular care. Dís smirked and remarked, “See now, what I find curious is you've been cheating all night and Bifur's beaten you twice.”  
  
“Ha-ha!” Dori laughed harshly. “It's because he's not even a very good cheat. Doesn't apply himself to anything, never has.”  
  
“Why don't you keep your opinions to yourself, eh Dori?” Nori asked, rising to his feet and getting up close to his brother. “Much as we've all enjoyed listening to your yapping on everything from the bad food to the slow ponies to the rotten weather, I think you're owed a bit of a break. Must be a difficult life when you're cursed with pointing out the flaws of everyone and everything around you.”  
  
“Hey, now, there's been nothing wrong with the food,” Bofur interjected, glancing over at Bombur who was making a slashing motion through the air with one hand. The message was clear: Never get involved in a fight with the Ri family, even when your own brother's pride is on the line.  
  
“Never said there was!” Nori raised his hands before him defensively. “Ever hear me complain? Even if I did, no one'd mark me what with all your grousing and bellowing and - ”  
  
“Who _wants_ to hear you?” Dori asked, his face contorted with barely-controlled rage. “All you ever spew is lies and false promises anyway. Not a word from your mouth can be trusted and that's the truth!”  
  
“Please stop, both of you,” Ori pleaded quietly, twisting the edge of his scarf in his hands.  
  
Thorin was on the verge of shouting at the both of them to shut their gobs and take their spat somewhere no one would have to be subjected to it when the sound of running feet crashing through the foliage made the whole company take up arms and turn toward the noise.

“TROLLS!” Kíli shouted, bursting through the leaves, digging his heels in so he wasn't impaled on Bifur's boar-spear as he neared the company.  
  
Fíli crashed into him a moment later and both went tumbling to the ground, spilling their stew bowls and shouting at the top of their voices. “MOUNTAIN TROLLS!”  
  
“And they've got the ponies!”  
  
“We ran as quick as we could - ”  
  
Cursing aloud, Thorin lifted both lads to their feet and growled, “I've half a mind to knock your empty heads together! What's happened to the ponies?”  
  
“They aren't far off!” Fíli gestured wildly behind him. “Three of 'em. They took the ponies off in pairs, what were we to do? They're going to eat 'em, probably - ”  
  
“We sent Bilbo on ahead to get them loose!”  
  
“YOU DID _WHAT_?!” Thorin and Dís shouted as one, their faces identical masks of fury.  
  
“You sent that hobbit - with _no_ arms or armor – on ahead of you against three trolls?” their mother shouted. Her own axe was in her hand and her sons eyed it nervously as though they expected it to be leveled at their heads any moment. “Are you mad?”  
  
“Cowardly's more like it!” Dwalin shouted, equally angry. “Stupid and cowardly!”  
  
“We came to fetch you!” Fíli insisted. Beneath it all, he was dumbfounded. He'd never given their burglar's lack of weaponry a thought, being a Dwarf, he assumed everyone he met was armed. “If we go now, we'll – Kíli!”  
  
But his younger brother, horrified at being called a coward, was already running pell mell back through the brush toward the trolls. He was one of the youngest among them and the most light of foot so he was sprinting yards ahead by the time the rest of the Company took to their heels.  
  
“Kíli!” his mother called, mingled prayers and curses running through her head. “You idiot! You wait for us, what do you think you're doing?”  
  
“If he's not dead by the time we find him,” Dwalin shouted from further behind, “I'll kill him myself!”  
  
Both halfling and dwarfling were on the ground when the Dwarves burst through the trees. Dís allowed herself a scant second of relief that Dwalin would indeed be able to kill her son – if they survived this encounter – before she was brandishing her axe and striking at the grasping arms of one of the big, nasty brutes with short sharp strokes.  
  
The night became a blur of sound, firelight and movement. Mountain trolls were notoriously stupid and slow, but they made up for it by being incredibly difficult to kill. Her blade was sharp as flint, but it drew little blood from the trolls whose hides were thick and leathery. The best way to fight a single troll was a melee in the hopes that chaotic fighting would confuse it enough that most of your warriors could run far enough away that by the time the beast could catch you, it would forget what it was chasing altogether.  
  
A group of trolls was even more deadly, as the company quickly found out. Óin was thrown to the ground and as one huge, grubby paw reached for him, Dís leapt over another prone figure – Dori? - and smashed the blunt side of her axe against the creature's hand, hearing bones crunch with great satisfaction. It howled and gave her enough time to hurl the older Dwarf to his feet and re-join the fray.  
  
The high whinnying of the ponies came above the noise of the fight and she suddenly remembered why they were there. Slicing into the back of the leg on one of the towering monsters, she whipped her head this way and that looking for her sons. Kíli was up, sword in hand, dodging this way and that and Fíli she spied after a moment, the firelight catching his hair. He passed close by her and she caught him by the hood, pulling him behind her and narrowly save him being stepped on. The both hit the ground and rolled away. Everyone, it seemed was beating a hasty retreat from the trolls and she tugged her son along to join them, mentally ticking off names as she saw each of her comrades. Thirteen dwarves accounted for, but -  
  
“Bilbo!” Kíli cried and would have lunged forward had his uncle not caught him by the chest and stopped him.  
  
Dís turned in time to see their little burglar splayed out high above the ground, the only captive of the trolls.  
  
“Like that?” one of them grunted. “Lay down your arms or we'll rip his off!”

At first, no one moved. To ask a Dwarf to lay down his arms was akin to requesting he cut off a limb; many would sooner die. Later, no one would admit it, but they all shared the same thought: What is the life of one hobbit worth, in the grand scheme of things?  
  
Yet, this was no longer 'one hobbit' to many of them. This was Bilbo Baggins, who ate with them and joked some with them. Who watched Bifur carve toys with such honest fascination in his eyes the other day that the old warrior gave him a pony to keep, as a present, since he admired the craftsmanship so. Their reluctant warrior who knocked a grown Man out cold without even trying. Just an hour earlier he confessed his worry to Dís that he might have accidentally offended Gandalf by implying that he was a poor wizard and he was concerned that was the reason he'd left so abruptly. She smiled and ruffled his curly hair affectionately and told him that likely wasn't the case, he was a good lad and shouldn't lose sleep over it.  
  
What was the life of one hobbit worth? Enough that a king and his companions threw down their weapons at the feet of their enemy in hopes his life would be spared.  
  
It was a weak, dying sort of hope that lost strength as the night drew on. They were stripped down to their underthings, like plucked chickens and half were tossed in sacks while the other half were tied to a spit for slow roasting. Dís had a few daggers tucked in her boots that she could use to cut herself free, only she was lying on her back and her arms were pinned one beneath her brother's legs and the other beneath Óin.  
  
“Have you got a plan brewing in that head of yours?” she hissed at Thorin. His silence was all the answer she needed.  
  
 _I'm not dying like this,_ she vowed to herself, twisting her shoulders in a fruitless attempt to reach the tops of her boots. _I am a princess of the line of Durin and I am **not** ending my days as a side dish._  
  
It looked as if they hadn't much choice, the beasts were arguing over the best way to serve them up and then, to add insult to injury, the burglar jumped to his feet and added his own two cents.  
  
“You're going to need something more than sage before you plate this lot up,” the halfling said knowingly.  
  
“Traitor!” someone thundered from the spit and Dís quite agreed with them. Hadn't they risked their own necks for his? Lain down their weapons – they'd only taken on the trolls to save his skin in the first place! And now he'd give them up and talk about _seasonings_ of all things?  
  
“The secret to cooking Dwarf is...” the hobbit began, then faltered. Trying to think up a good lie to save his skin? It wouldn't work, whatever it was, the little bastard would be as dead as them, perhaps not as quickly, but just as finally.  
  
“Yes?” one of the trolls demanded. “Come on.”  
  
“It's...erm...”  
  
“Tell us the secret!” shouted another.  
  
“Yes,” the hobbit hissed, frustrated. “I'm telling you, the secret is to...skin them first!” And he smiled as if he'd done something clever.  
  
When the troll called for his filleting knife, the Dwarves started raining abuse down on the halfling. “It's no use trying to save yourself!” Dís yelled angrily. “They'll roast you up all the same when they're done with us!”  
  
It was only when the hobbit started blathering on about worms that she started to suspect he might be doing something useful. Thorin noticed the same time she did and delivered a swift kick in the back to Kíli whose plaintive objections were quickly replaced with over-enthusiastic agreement that his parasites were the biggest parasites.  
  
Dís closed her eyes and groaned as _everyone_ yelped and carried on about parasites. Not the brightest, Balin said the night their quest began. She was beginning to understand his concern about the decided lack of intellectuals in their Company.  
  
If the diversion worked, it was of short duration. The brightest of the trolls saw through them and, apparently insulted, started in on Bilbo, “You think I don't know what you're up to? This little ferret is taking us for fools!”

Ignoble death was staring them all in the face, when the most extraordinary thing happened; Gandalf returned. In a voice that made the very rocks of the earth tremble, he raised his staff and cried, “The Dawn will take you all!” Bringing his staff down upon a boulder, the rock split and sunlight flooded the valley, turning the trolls to stone for all time.  
  
It was with unspeakable relief that Dís was able to access her daggers and cut herself and her fellows free from their bonds. Contrary to her earlier decision that Dwalin would be allowed to murder her younger son, she took both boys in her arms, kissed them soundly and cuffed them hard on the back of the head.  
  
“You are unbelievable,” she growled, but she was smiling. “ _Unbelievable_.”  
  
Youthful spirits are quick to recover from near death experiences and the lads were back to joking almost immediately. “Unbelievably brave?” Kíli asked.  
  
“Unbelievably handsome?” Fíli added, grinning.  
  
Dís laughed and poor Bilbo, trying to scrub the filth from his coat with his sleeve, scowled, “I don't see what there is to be merry about.”  
  
“Lots!” Kíli supplied. “We lived!”  
  
“All of us!” Fíli said, punching Bilbo hard on the arm in a show of friendship and respect. “Sorry for running of on you earlier, didn't even occur to us you'd be unarmed! That was good, all that nonsense about skinning and parasites. Had me fooled!”  
  
“And me!” Kíli nodded, punching Bilbo's other arm and effectively halting the halfling's cleaning efforts. “I hadn't any idea 'til Thorin kicked me.”  
  
Dís pinched the bridge of her nose and, as she did every morning since she became a mother, prayed for patience. “Aye, we noticed,” she observed wryly. “You see, Bilbo, my sons are actually very clever, in their own way. When they get it in their heads to make trouble, they make such _terrible_ trouble that once all's said and done, I'm so pleased they've survived that I haven't the heart to give them their due comeuppance.”  
  
“So, we're unbelievably clever, then?” Fíli asked earnestly.  
  
Patting his head, his mother smiled sweetly and said, “Just unbelievable. And that's all I'll say on the matter. Now, put your trousers on so we can leave this place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying really hard not to make Fíli and Kíli out to be total idiots, but I can't argue with what's on screen. OH MY GOD BOYS YOU ARE TOO DUMB TO LIVE SOMETIMES. And the Ri family needs to stop hijacking my brain with their interpersonal drama, it's not the time, I NEED TO WRITE ABOUT TROLLS.


	11. Chapter 11

The exploration of the troll hoard was the only bright spot in an otherwise miserable day. There was no quicker way to make a dwarf forget his troubles than by waving a few gold pieces under his nose. Even if the gold in question did carry the distinct odor of troll.  
  
They made their homes underground and some older dwarrows were more accustomed to the glint of gold veins in the mines than they were to the blinding yellow of the sun. They were put upon the earth to mine it, to prize its treasures from stone with all their strength and transform raw metal and uncut gems into tools for work and objects of beauty. Greedy, other races called them. Yet they basked in the glow of their golden sun and took delight in the trees and the might of the oceans. Were not these things also of the earth? How then might a Man or Elf call Dwarves greedy when they too bent the earth to their wills, coaxing crops from the dirt and affixing its beasts to their plows? Dwarrow-work was often done in darkness, but the fruits of their labor were not dark. Their blades gleamed and their gemstones shone and glowed like the stars in the night sky.  
  
Naturally, there were variations and not a dwaves shared the same respect for the treasures of the earth as others. Dís smiled when she saw Dwalin sigh at the trio who busied themselves digging a hole to store a chest of gold pieces for safe-keeping. Personally, she saw no harm in it (even slipped a fistful of coins into her own pocket since they would need a bit of pin money sooner or later) and wondered why he looked so cross.  
  
“Seem so sure they’ll be back to collect it,” he replied stiffly and she saw that the look in his eyes was not anger; it was an old sorrow.  
  
Dís looked up at her old friend and she wished she could do something to wipe the unhappiness from his mind. Her fingers itched to lay themselves on his arm or shoulder, but she knew he would not welcome the contact. Dwalin was demonstrative enough when he was cheerful, but when he was not, he did not bear well uninvited hands upon him. “It’s good to have hope, I think,” she said quietly, beckoning him away from the group that they might speak. “They would not have come with us if they were so certain we were leading them to their graves.”  
  
“We lead nothing,” he said evenly, leaning against the wall of the cave and looking at Thorin who was conversing with the wizard. “He leads. And I will follow him until I am called to the halls of my father and forefathers.”  
  
A familiar ache built up in her chest at his words, which she knew were not a reproach, but an affirmation. Dís had to restrain herself from shooting what would doubtless be a very silly smile up at Dwalin. Sometimes she suspected her heart could burst for love of him. He was all one of their race should be: loyal, strong, brave, battle-scarred and _good_. He loved Thorin as Dís herself did, brother and king, friend and leader. “You are too good,” she said and Dwalin looked at her oddly.  
  
“Too good?” he asked. “How’s that?”  
  
“It’s as I say,” she shrugged. “You are too good. A paragon. Sometimes I’m not sure you’re real, Dwalin, son of Fundin.”  
  
The dwarrow-man smiled and reached out to run one of her braids between his fingers. “And what of you, Dís, daughter of Thráin?”  
  
She played at being deliberately obtuse. “What _of_ me?” she asked, letting him touch her hair as he would. Some might think it was an intimate thing, but Dís had known Dwalin the whole of her life and if anyone was free to take liberties of her friends, it was him. “I’m as ordinary as they come.”  
  
That did it. The hurt and pain in his face left him and Dwalin let out a great thundering laugh. “Ordinary?” he asked, through gulps of air. “Ordinary, she says! Ordinary as mithril in an iron foundry.”  
  
“Mithril, am I?” Dís asked, amused, twining the braid he’d so recently touched between her fingers. “Is that your kindly way of telling me I’m going grey?”  
  
“Nah,” Dwalin shook his head and smiled at her in a very particular way. “It’s ‘cos you’re strong as steel, lovely as silver and rare as diamonds.”

If they were left alone, truly alone, their teasing conversation would have taken a very different turn, but Thorin swept by them, declaring, “Let’s get out of this foul place.” As they always would, they followed him, Dwalin catching sight of the finely crafted blade in his king’s hand.  
  
“Not Dwarf-make, that,” he observed, but Thorin ignored the comment completely.  
  
“Well, that’s nice,” Nori observed, knocking the dirt from his sleeves with a fastidiousness that would have made his elder brother proud had Dori not been keeping himself as far from the stench of the cave as he could. “Everyone gets a little something.”  
  
“Nearly makes up for being stripped down to our skivvies and trussed up like sucking pigs,” Bofur observed.  
  
“Don’t mention pig,” Glóin moaned. “I’d give my left boot for a bite from a hog roast. Why my wife does the finest - ”  
  
“Aye, aye,” Nori waved a hand impatiently. “We _all_ wish we had a bite of Hervor’s roast now, don’t we lads?”  
  
One could never be sure exactly what Nori meant when he spoke, he was slippery-tongued (dragon-tongued, some said), but he was also bright enough not to deliberately pick a fight with the likes of Glóin, whose temper was legendary. He could be laughing and burying a chest of gold with you one minute, smacking you around the next and, once he’d cooled some, helping you to your feet and taking you to his brother for a poultice. Before he realized his comment was badly taken Nori found himself slammed up against the nearest tree, bark scraping the back of his head. “Mind your tone!” Glóin growled, pressing the younger dwarf harder against the unyielding trunk.  
  
Turning red-faced in his struggle, Nori kicked at him and squeaked out, “Didn’t mean nothing by it!”  
  
“Get your hands off him!” Dori shouted, wrenching Glóin off his younger brother with one tug. Dori was one of the strongest of their company, which was not a face often advertised for he was mild of nature and did not charge first into the fray - except in matters concerning his younger brothers. Fight like cats and dogs they did, but the only jabs the elder Ri brothers made at one another were hurtful words and they were family besides. Dori did not take well to threats being made against Nori’s person by anyone other than himself.  
  
“He’s paying gross insult to my wife!” Glóin thundered, struggling against the arms that held him fast. Though Glóin was not the eldest of them by a long shot, he could be a bit of a stick-in-the-mud when it came to jokes and ribaldry - especially when his fair wife was the butt of them.  
  
“He’s paying compliments to her cooking,” Bombur said smoothly, insinuating himself between the enraged dwarf and Nori. “Aren’t you, young Nori?”  
  
‘Young Nori’ was a childhood nickname that originated among the miners of the Blue Mountains, in the years before Nori struck out on his own, when he was an unhappy apprentice living under his mother’s roof. Used to drive him mad when he was younger and even now he thought they ought to give up the appellation since the joke was old and worn out, but he was grateful for someone coming to his defense. He was so often alone on the road, or else the company he kept so untrustworthy that it was easy to forget he still had friends in this world.  
  
“I was indeed,” he said, one hand unconsciously rising to rub his throat. Nothing damaged.  
  
“And even if he _wasn’t_ ,” Bofur said and Nori shot him a murderous look at the implication that would only get Glóin in a rage again, “I think Hervor can take a bit of teasing. Your wife’s not soft, eh?”  
  
And she was not. For all Glóin’s bluster, Hervor was a stout lass who was as apt to laugh at a joke made at her expense as she was to knock you arse over head about it. Yet she was widely regarded the finest looking dwarrow-woman east of the Misty Mountains, so Glóin could be forgiven his sensitivity where she was concerned. Hervor could have had anyone she wanted and she picked _him_ which Glóin felt had more to do with sheer dumb luck than any outstanding qualities of his, some days.

The squabble roused Thorin’s notice and he marched to the back of the assembled group, took in the scene and impatiently asked, “What’s all this?”  
  
“Just a pair o'cocks pecking at each other,” Bofur shrugged. “Glóin here got it in his head that young Nori - ”  
  
Thorin raised a hand to silence him. “Either have it out or keep walking.”  
  
They opted to keep walking. Like as not Nori would soon say something else that would offend the old campaigner and if there was to be bloodshed, they hoped it would be over something a little more worthy of a row than Hervor’s roasts.  
  
The sound of something tearing through the woods caused the whole company to halt, hands going to weapons with a practiced ease and fluidity.  
  
“Something’s coming!” Dwalin announced, ears sharp as ever, even accounting for the one that had been mangled by warg teeth decades ago.  
  
“Arm yourselves!” Gandalf ordered belatedly. The dwarves already had their weapons in hand and despite the sleepless night they passed, they were ready to fell any foe that threatened their -  
  
“Thieves! Fire! Murder!”  
  
Dís did not lower her axe, but some of the tension left her arms when she saw that it was some addled old hermit, cut from the same cloth as their wizard Gandalf - indeed, from the way their wizard greeted him, she realized it was another of his ilk. He seemed even shabbier than the Grey Wizard, if that was at all possible. His manner was distracted and from his mouth came the most garbled slew of nonsense Dís had been privy to since Bilbo carried on about the best way to serve Dwarf.  
  
“There’s two of ‘em?” Óin asked, frowning deeply. “I’d have thought one was enough.”  
  
“There’s five,” Bilbo offered quietly, watching the wizards intently. “ I asked Gandalf about it...was it only yesterday? Yes, it must have been. Erm. That’s the Brown one...he likes animals, doesn’t spend much time away from the forest.”  
  
“Sounds like a damned Elf,” Dwalin muttered disapprovingly. Beside him, Thorin glowered. Was the wizard going to force them to have contact with that race, like it or not? Where _had_ he gone off to the day before?.  
  
If the hobbit thought the Dwarf’s tone was more critical than was called for when speaking about Elves, he didn’t say anything. In the first place, he did not want to invite conflict and in the second he was very confident that Dwalin could snap him in half between his little fingers.  
  
“Doesn’t look much like an Elf,” Fíli observed, taking in the ratty clothes and the matted-down hair. With a smirk on his face, he hit his younger brother on the arm and added, “Some wizards, eh?”  
  
Kíli hit his brother in turn and pointed out, “He turned those trolls to stone.”  
  
“The _sun_ turned those trolls to stone,” Nori clarified.  
  
“But Gandalf...helped it along a bit,” Ori added.  
  
“Quiet, all of you,” Thorin commanded and the Company fell silent. The words ‘Greenwood’ reached their leader’s ears and he much desired to know what was happening in that region. Not for any kinship with the Elves who were the loyal subjects of King Thranduil, he who turned away from a people in need. But the forest of Greenwood was close to Erebor and if some foulness was penetrating those woods, it might soon overtake the Lonely Mountain.  
  
“Dol Guldur?” Balin murmured, brow furrowing. “The Dark Hill?”  
  
The name was familiar to the Erebor-born of the quest, but only as a campfire story meant to thrill and frighten young dwarflings into bed. The abandoned fortress was the highest point in the Elves’ forest and any misfortune that befell the Dwarves of the East, from a lost campaign to a stillborn child, was attributed to that hill and the evil that was said to reside there. What broke up the Iron Mountains in the First Age? An evil of Dol Guldur even before the creation of the fortress, for the hill itself was said to be cursed. Was that the wind howling so fiercely at night? No, it was the screams of the lost souls trapped forever in the crumbling ruin, crying out for release or revenge. Did you lose your boots? No, one of the goblins of Dul Goldur came in the night and stole them.  
  
The wizards' dreadful conversation ceased when a mournful keening resounded through the forest, first, far away, but drawing steadily closer.

The bone-shaking howl in the distance turned the blood in Dís’s veins to ice water. Unlike the hobbit, she knew _exactly_ what that sound was and it haunted her nightmares. On the road they were beset more than once my marauding Orcs and she heard those fearful howls and growls carrying to the healers’ tents from the battlefield of Azanulbizar. The mounts of those foul creatures were as dangerous as Orcs themselves  
  
“Was that was that a wolf?” Bilbo asked, fear coloring his tone. He had no idea.  
  
The beast was upon them before many of them determined where the cries were coming from. With a snarl, it bounded from above and would have torn Nori’s throat out, had his brother not pushed him out of the path. Its great paws knocked Dori to the ground and Dís saw Nori’s weighted staff come down upon the thing’s head. She sliced at it’s foreleg with her axe, crippling the monster, but trapping Dori beneath it. Thorin slashed at its dripping jaws with his sword  
  
No sooner at the first begun to breath it’s last but another emerged from the forest. Kíli’s arrow struck home, but it was Dwalin who delivered the killing blow. Dís’s head was spinning; first trolls, now orcs? Her keen blue eyes slid over to the grim faces of the wizards. She was still unconvinced that they were sharp of mind or great of power, but she could no longer doubt that they were right about a gathering darkness in the land.  
  
But right or no, she would not stand by and watch her brother get shouted down like a wayward dwarfling and say nothing.  
  
“Who did you tell about your quest, beyond your kin?” Gandalf demanded, his voice beginning to take on the booming quality it had when he faced down the trolls.  
  
Thorin, still shaken by the encounter with the wargs, looked astonished and his voice was not as steady as it ordinarily was, “No one.”  
  
The wizard was unsatisfied, “Who did you tell?”  
  
“No one! I swear,” Thorin said, his voice stronger now.  
  
“My brother does not lie,” Dís said, standing between her brother and the wizard, bloody axe in hand. She made no move to strike the wizard, that would be foolhardy, but in that moment she dearly wanted to see him bleed. He’d done nothing but needle and vex Thorin since their journey began. Her brother was not infallible, but he had proved himself honorable and trustworthy a thousand times over in the course of his life and the wizard had no right to question that.  
  
The wizard shook his head, muttering to himself and Thorin pushed his sister aside to ask him, “What in Durin’s name is going on?”  
  
“You are being hunted,” was the unsatisfactory reply.  
  
Together, Dwalin, Nori and Kíli hauled the warg’s lifeless corpse off of Dori who waved off their efforts to help him to his feet. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he insisted. “The only casualty was an already torn and dirty coat.”  
  
“We have to get out of here,” Dwalin insisted, uncaring about the plight of Dori’s traveling clothes.  
  
“We can’t,” Ori squeaked and rushed to explain himself as the Company looked at him with incredulous expressions. “We have to ponies. They bolted.”  
  
They were _never_ leaving the dwarflings in charge of their mounts again. If they had limbs enough to ride by the end of this spree. The Brown Wizard stepped forward with manic gleam in his eye and declared, “I’ll draw them off!”  
  
“These are Gundabad wargs!” Gandalf thundered. “They will outrun you.”  
  
“ _These_ are Rhosgobel rabbits,” the strange creature stated, for all the world as if he was talking about the most elite, highly trained class of warriors known to all the races of the world. “I’d like to see them try.”  
  
As the dwarves and their hobbit ran for their lives behind the wizard, Dori caught a flash of some quick-moving thing alongside him. What he thought he saw could not possibly be what was, so he slowed to get a second look - and stop dead in his tracks. Dori paused and stared, open-mouthed at Radagast and his sleigh. “I must...I must have hit my head harder than I thought,” he wondered. “Is that...those aren’t...”  
  
“Never mind what it is,” Bombur insisted, giving Dori a shove in a display of force that ran quite contrary to his nature. “ _Run!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God, you guys, writing this chapter was like pulling teeth, I hope it didn't read that way. I find the more I have to incorporate actual lines from the movie, my writing feels flat. But no worries because soon they'll be in Rivendell and I can write side-scenes and inner monologues to my heart's content!


	12. Chapter 12

Bombur’s urging was well meant, but there was precious little place _to_ run. Even a troop of Elves would find this great grassy field was the absolute worst terrain to dodge an enemy, for Dwarves it was like stepping into a nightmare. Valleys were fine places to stage a battle, but in general, Dwarrow-folk were much more comfortable in low-lit caves. The sun did not blind their eyes, they had nooks and crannies in which to crouch or spring from as they waylaid their enemies. This much wide open space was disorienting to most of their kind and one of the worst memories the Erebor-born had of their exile was the vulnerability of sleeping and traveling in the open. Wide expanses of grass and sky meant that the possibility of danger lurked all around them and they would need a hundred ever vigilant eyes to keep them safe.

Until Erebor was theirs again and all their people once again within the mountain’s strong stone walls, they never would be safe.

The howls and snarls of the wargs and the gutteral cries of their hideous riders sounded around them - too close, always too close. Running from violence was unbecoming of a Dwarf, but they had not slept the night before and would be overtaken in open combat against such an enemy. The pride of Durin’s line sang in Dís’s veins and willed her to tell the wizard to hang himself, stay and _fight_ while her reason whispered over and over that it was folly.

So she ran, they all did, darting from rocky outcropping to outcropping, Thorin once grabbing little Ori by the back of his hood and throwing him bodily behind himself. Dís caught the lad as he stumbled and nearly fell, which would have meant his death if he could not catch up with the group.

“Steady on,” she said, squeezing his shoulder. The lad gave her a brief smile and ran as the wizard commanded them. She thought she heard Thorin ask where they were being led, but if Gandalf gave him answer, she was too far ahead of him to hear it.

They sought refuge behind an enormous boulder, but one of the cannier Orcs was right above their heads on his mount. It was a matter of moments before he spied them and alerted his fellows to their whereabouts. Thorin met his sister’s eye for one brief instant and he saw that she knew what had to be done. The only one among them with a ranged weapon was Kíli; he would have to shoot and shoot well.

Thorin nodded once to Kíli who took up his bow and shot the Orc’s mount. Even though it was taken from close range, the warg’s death was neither swift nor silent. It tumbled down the rock, growling and its master too shouted and raised a ruckus, even as Dwalin and Bifur beat the thing and the orc’s black, tar-like blood oozed from his wounds.

Before they knew it, they were surrounded. Among the confusion, they lost their wizard.

“Where’s Gandalf?” Fíli asked, looking around for the tall, grey figure.

“He’s abandoned us!” Dwalin concluded, furiously.

Dís cursed aloud, axe in one hand, sword in the other. They placed their trust - begrudgingly in her case - in this sorceror only for him to abandon them time and again when they had need of him. Now and again he showed a glimpse of might beyond the face he most often showed to the world, but if he truly possessed such power, why not harness it now? Why use it only to cool hot dwarvish tempers and afright trolls? Why not plant his staff upon the ground and strike their enemies dead in their midst?

“Hold your ground!” Thorin commanded. What else could he say? If they were to die now, they would die facing their enemy, backs straight, weapons at the ready -

“Here, you fools!” Gandalf called, appearing from behind a rock some distance hence.

\- or they would run again. At the wizard’s bidding. She was beginning to hate wizards.

Bristling, Dís whipped her head around and took stock of who was running for safety and she saw immediately that her sons were waiting on her brother. And she would not leave any of them. “Come along!” she shouted to her sons, to her brother - to Dwalin who would wait for all of them - reason winning out over dwarvish pride. This was a fight they could not win and Kíli’s quiver would empty and their swords would dull and still the enemy would come.

“Kíli! Run!” Thorin shouted at his nephew, still desperately seeking to hold the Orcs off with his arrows. What a loyal band they made, Dís thought cynically, running slowly enough that her sons were in front of her and her brother beside her by the time they reached the fissure in the rock Gandalf had hidden in. Like as not they’d all die in one another’s arms.

Dís saw her sons safely down before she found herself unceremoniously shoved down the sharply slanting tunnel by her loving brother. Not to be outdone, she grabbed hold of his coat as she fell down the chute and the two of them tumbled one on top of the other, landing hard on the stone. Their weapons, so carefully crafted and well-loved, clattered like spoons dropped by a careless scullery maid after them. 

“Was that necessary?” Thorin asked breathlessly as Balin, sighing softly and shaking his head at the two of them, hauled him off his sister to his feet.

“Completely,” Dís nodded, allowing Bofur to tug her right side up. “Crown needs a head to rest on and I’ll not have you losing yours playing look-out.” She tossed Thorin his sword and her brother caught it deftly, a slow smile playing about his mouth.

“My bodyguard, are you?” he asked, handing her the sword she bore that once belonged to their brother.

“Always,” she replied, taking it from him.

Their mirth was short-lived. Dwalin ran a bit ahead of them and called down the stone hall, “I cannot see where the pathway leads! Do we follow it or no?”

In all likelihood, he meant for Thorin to give him answer, but after they day they’d had, Bofur felt confident asserting, “Follow it, of course!”

Fíli let out a bark of laughter, gave Bofur a poke in the back of the head and gestured toward his uncle. “Who appointed you head of the King’s Guard?” he asked.

Bofur raised both his dark brows and fixed the young dwarf with a matter-of-fact expression. “It’s this way or that,” he replied, one arm pointing down the long dark hall and the other back at the opening of the tunnel. “I don’t want to go back up there. I’ll bet money _Thorin_ doesn’t want to go back up there - “ Turning to the king-in-exile he added, “Unless I seriously misjudged the situation. _Do_ you want to go back up there?”

“Not especially,” Thorin admitted.

“See?” Bofur said, putting an arm around Fíli’s shoulder and pushing the lad forward. “No need for official proclamations and royal seals. Hi-ho, follow the path we’ll go...there’s a song in that, don’t you think?”

This last was thrown over his shoulder to Dís, a private joke, of a sort between the two of them. Víli, her husband and father of her sons had the heart of a minstrel and was forever making up little ditties for the pleasure (or annoyance) of the townsfolk in the Blue Mountains. He and Bofur were of an age and thick as thieves growing up. Nowadays, whenever Bofur was struck by a thought or found himself in a situation he thought Víli would find funny, he’d usually remark that he reckoned there was a song to be had in there, somewhere.

“I’m sure there is,” Dís smiled back, but her heart was not really in it. Víli, life-long resident of the Ered Luin that he was, also happened to be of Durin’s Folk. Would he have followed, she wondered? Would he have laughed about the trolls this day with his sons? How long would he have waited at the mouth of that cave? If he’d been along, he would let himself get cut by a thousand Orcish knives until he was assured of his friends’ and family’s safety.

But _would_ he have come? Dís was almost ashamed to admit to herself that she did not know. He was not Erebor-born. The siren song of home did not keep him up nights or haunt his days. Contented, he was, always content. Happy to live out his days in the Blue Mountains with the simple comforts he enjoyed there.

Would he have taken up his mattock and joined them? Or, when she asked him to, would he have looked at her with uncomprehending eyes asking why on earth they would do such a dangerous thing when they were alright just as they were?

Perhaps it was not that Dís did not know the answer. Perhaps she did know what his response would be and simply did not like it.

They walked along the narrow gap in the rock until it opened up to a clear sky, the cleanest air and softest breezes caressing their lank hair and dirty faces. Thorin realized before the rest of them where exactly the wizard’s scheming brought them. “Elves,” he hissed, tensing as he took in the look of the place, so different from any dwarrow-dwelling built by dwarvish masons.

Their people would have taken advantage of the rocks around to enclose themselves in. They would have made an impenetrable fortress of this place rather than a wide-open expanse of halls and rooms with stone carved so thinly that it seemed to welcome the encroaching greenery. The natural falls would have been employed turning massive water wheels to power looms, and clever mechanical devices to aid in their metalwork.

“The Valley of Imladris,” Gandalf uttered the words with great dignity, somehow expecting the dwarves to be impressed. Not receiving the oohs and ahhs he clearly felt the place deserved, he added, “But in the common tongue it’s known by another name.”

Bilbo took in the sight of the place with wide, eager eyes, all the awe the Company could ever hope to summon up shining in his face. “Rivendell,” he said, reverently.

What the halfling saw as a mystical world of legend, beauty and elegance, the likes of which he’d dreamed of from his books and mother’s stories, the dwarves saw in Rivendell only a great deal of wasted potential.

“Here lies the Last Homely House East of the Sea,” Gandalf announced proudly. The only emotion Dís felt as she took the place in was disgust and that disgust was echoed in her brother’s angry accusation upon the wizard.

“This was your plan all along,” he snarled, simmering rage barely kept in check beneath the surface. To lead them here, to the heart of the Elvish countryside, was tantamount to betrayal in Thorin’s mind. “To seek refuge with our enemy.”

“You have no enemies here - ” Gandalf began, but Dís, who was tired of kowtowing to his every whim, cut him off.

“Neither do we have any allies,” she said, hand resting on the hilt of her sword. Even those they counted among their allies in the East refused to aid them along their way. Why would the Elves, the same race who watched the Mountain burn, offer them the support their kin denied? What reason did they have for making themselves useful in the translation of the map - a map which was not meant for their eyes. “No soft feelings exist among Elves for Dwarves.”

The wizard would not be swayed. “The only ill-will to be found in this valley is that which you bring yourselves,” he insisted stubbornly.

Wizards must have short memories, she decided. Or else he did not know the full extent of the suffering of their people. For not only did the Elves refuse to contribute to the slaying of the dragon, they offered no safe haven for them, no help in traversing the wild. The wizard did not know of the mothers and fathers who died bodily defending their children from Orcs. Of the dwarflings and infants slain not by orcish arrows, but by sickness, cold and hunger. Or the indignities suffered, the curses hurled at them, the money cheated them in the towns of Men who thought them thieves and liars.

Gandalf _must_ not know or he would not treat their distrust so callously. No creature could be that cruel without having a taint of evil in them and although Dís thought the wizard stupid, mad, unreliable and _wrong_ , she did not think him evil.

There was nothing to be done for it. They could not go back and try their luck with the orcs, tired, and ill-prepared as they were. They continued walking, Thorin’s brows knit into storm clouds and his face shadowed with anger. Gandalf was meant to further their quest, not twist their purpose to fulfill his own desires. _What_ he thought he would accomplish here was a mystery to Thorin. Did he expect the Elves to welcome the Company? The wizard would be in for the shock of his long life when whatever Elvish lord ruled this place turned them away.

“You think the Elves will give this quest their _blessing_?” he asked with an incredulity bordering on contempt. “They will try to stop us.”

“Of course they will!” Gandalf agreed, exasperated. “But we have questions that need to be answered. If we are to be successful, this will need to be handled with tact and respect and no small degree of charm.” He drew himself up and seemed to smile, uncaring that the Dwarves were looking at him with expressions of mingled contempt and disbelief. “Which is why you will leave the talking to me.”

Dwalin squinted at the wizard’s back, Keeper in hand. He made a brief show of miming lining up his shot. “If I threw it from here, I could have his head clean off,” he whispered to Thorin.

“Don’t be thick,” Thorin replied just as quietly. “It would be a waste of a good axe.”

Their burglar was craning his neck so far back to take in the sights and sounds around him, Dís feared he was about to topple over. If he fell, she decided, it was his own affair and she would not aid him to his feet. The sheer delight on his plan, sweet-featured face soured her feelings toward him slightly. Recently, Bilbo approached them with less timidity than in weeks prior, but his growing affection and respect for his traveling partners was eclipsed by the sheer awe on his face as his shining eyes took in the splendors of Rivendell.

Beside her, Kíli was looking this way and that, but his face mirrored only the apprehension of his fellows. Having lived all his life in the Blue Mountains and only venturing as far as the surrounding Mannish towns before this journey, he’d never seen the like of an Elvish stronghold before. “Why would Gandalf take us among Elves?” he asked his mother worriedly.

 _Because he bears some unknown grudge and seeks to shame us for his amusement,_ she thought, but modified her response slightly for her son’s benefit. “I do not think he understands what he is asking of us.”

“Gandalf wouldn’t lead us into danger, would he?” he asked with the blind trust of the very young.

“I don’t think he would...do so intentionally,” she replied after a pause to find the right words. “But keep your sword at the ready all the same.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dís's mistrust of wizards is ALMOST on level with her mistrust of Elves at this point and I can't say I blame her. I'm going to keep the Dwarves in Rivendell a little longer than they seemed to be there in the movie - not as long as they were there in the book, but they're not just going to chew and screw. This is me being self-indulgent because (as you probably know) there's a lot of action coming up and I'd like to give myself a bit of a break from writing about how the dwarves are running everywhere ;-)


	13. Chapter 13

Dís had little personal experience with Elves, nearly all of it negative. The day the Dragon came was a blur to her, but she did remember seeing a line of impossibly tall, lithe mounted creatures on the horizon, turning their backs and disappearing even as the Dwarves of Erebor fled for their lives. When she was a little older, she clearly remembered staring into the pale eyes of an Elven bowman who drew his weapon upon her when they strayed too far into their territory. This up-close encounter probably lasted less than five minutes, but she remembered being very much afraid. Their horses were enormous compared to the mules and ponies that pulled the wagons of the exiles and their riders were so tall and smooth and pale, they seemed otherworldly, like she imagined ghosts would be.  
  
Most held that Elves were the fairest of all races, with a beauty and wisdom beyond reckoning. Dís could not agree with that assessment. When she was a child, she reckoned Elves were monsters. Now that she was grown, she knew it was not so, but she found no beauty in them and what use was their wisdom if they kept themselves to themselves and offered no aid to a desperate people?  
  
The dark-haired Elf that approached them did not seem outwardly hostile, but Dís stayed close to her sons and did not take her eyes off him for a moment. The smooth, perpetually unlined faces of the Elven race were like masks, it was impossible to glean their thoughts from their expressions. No lines of either pleasure or pain lay on their brows, she could not tell if this one as more accustomed to smiles or frowns, if he spent time outside or underground, he might have been fifty years old, he might have seen the rise and fall of thousands of years. It like looking at a mask or a statue, but one that moved and spoke; the sensation was unsettling in the extreme. He addressed Gandalf by a strange name and when he spoke to the wizard in his language, Thorin muttered a warning to the Company and with good reason. Any word they did not understand might be command to attack.  
  
“I must speak with Lord Elrond,” Gandalf insisted and Dís was grateful that he used the common tongue. Her pleasure when the Elf replied in kind was short-lived for his answer was unspeakably frustrating.  
  
“My Lord Elrond is not here.”  
  
They had been chased by Orcs and Wargs in the open air for nearly a mile, got thrown into a cave and tricked into coming to an Elvish dwelling and the Lord their wizard _insisted_ they must speak to was not at home? If looks could kill, Gandalf would have been a rapidly decaying corpse at the Elf’s feet for Dís turned her head slowly to stare at the wizard with cold murder in her eyes.  
  
Gandalf seemed to notice for he glanced down at the dwarrowdam and shifted a little uncomfortably on the spot. Dís and Dwalin’s eyes met over the top of her brother’s head; the wizard was not as all-knowing as he thought himself to be. Drawing himself up, Gandalf asked, “Not here? Where is he?” But the clomping of hooves over hard ground, drawing steadily closer, answered the wizard before the gatekeeper said another word.  
  
Dwalin cursed aloud and Thorin shouted at them to take arms and close ranks. Without thinking anything about it, Dís grabbed hold of Kíli by the back of the hood and shoved him behind her as they closed ranks. Insulting? Perhaps, but all the dwarves around her reacted the same way, taking hold of the one they deemed most vulnerable and pulling them into the relative safety of the group. Bombur took hold of Bifur (though the old campaigner was well-equipt to defend himself if need be), Dwalin moved Ori into the protection of the outer circle and Bofur even had the courtesy to tug their hobbit to safety, though doubtless the halfling would prefer to kiss the feet of the Elves that surrounded them.

Dís was no longer a child of five-and-twenty years, she was armed now and prepared to cut down any Elf who threatened those she held dear. The Elves surrounded them in moments, but the odds were in their favor. They were greater in numbers, their enemies were mounted and currently unarmed. Thorin had to but give the word and they would cripple their horses. Elves were fleet of foot and their reflexes were legendary, but if the Dwarves struck hard and fast they could carve a path back to the cave and hope against hope that the Orcs tired of the pursuit and drew away.  
  
The Dwarves were tense as drawn bow strings and their eyes moved restlessly, each calculating what actions would lead to the survival of themselves and their kinfolk. The Elves, by contrast, sat relaxed upon their horses, for their Lord dismounted and spoke to the wizard with great familiarity.  
  
Within the protective circle of the dwarves, the hobbit shifted restlessly. It was clear that Gandalf was known to Lord Elrond and all his books described the Elves as the greatest of all races that held sway over Middle-earth. Why, then, were his companions acting like this was an ambush in the making?  
  
There were several reasons, but primary among those was the fact that Gandalf and Lord Elrond insisted on speaking the language of the Elven race. Khuzdul was a sacred language, passed down to the Dwarves by their Creator, unchanged since the first of their race trod beneath the earth. They did rarely spoke it outside of their halls and homes unless they were in battle, for nothing enlivened the blood of a Dwarf like hearing their war-cries in his own tongue. To speak one’s language so freely in mixed company was akin to a declaration of war, for those who heard the words would not live long enough to share them with others.  
  
Evidently it was not so with Elves, since Lord Elrond made no motion to indicate that his fellows should strike. Still the Dwarves were vigilant and did not lower their weapons, even when the Elf switched to the common speech and startled them all by identifying their leader immediately.  
  
“Welcome Thorin, son of Thráin,” the Elf said, looking the King-in-Exile in the eyes as he spoke.  
  
It was strange that an Elf Thorin had never encountered before in his life picked him out so easily, especially when Dís stood beside him. No dwarrow-folk would make such an error, but there were still Men in the Blue Mountains who routinely got the brother and sister wrong way round when they did business at their smithy.  
  
If the Elf meant to establish the connection with the line of Durin as a tactic to gain their trust or appear friendly in their eyes, it was the wrong approach. “I do not believe we have met,” Thorin replied with only the thinnest veneer of civility in his words.  
  
“You have your grandfather’s bearing.”  
  
Beside her brother, Dís stiffened and gave the Elf a calculating look. His face with its smooth, marble-like countenance betrayed none of his thoughts to her, nor did his dark eyes reveal his feelings, but she felt sure there was an insult intended in that seemingly benign statement. Her grandfather was one of the greatest of Erebor’s kings - and history was destined to record him as one of the mountain’s most corrupt rulers for it fell beneath sightless eyes, blinded by sickness.  
  
For her grandfather _was_ ill, Dís knew that as surely as she knew her own mind. The dragon sickness was a rare and terrible ailment that overpowered many of their race. It was not simple _greed_ as outsiders would have it, the gold lust ran deeper than that, it was a wanting that burned beneath the skin and drove the sufferer to disregard everything, even his own life. There were rumors of those afflicted burdening themselves with cases of gold and gemstones, forsaking all fellow creatures and dying alone, feverish and starving in the wilderness.  
  
Some called her grandfather weak, but his granddaughter would lay flat any who did so in her hearing. Any outsider who mentioned her grandfather put her on her guard, for they had no idea how strong he was to have resisted the worst of the madness as long as he did.

“I knew Thrór when he ruled under the Mountain,” the Elf continued. Thorin’s thoughts were running along the same path as his sister’s and he drew himself up, piercing the Elven lord with a disdainful glare.  
  
“Indeed?” he sneered, any effort at politeness falling by the wayside. “He made no mention of _you_.”  
  
Thorin was a great warrior, a loyal friend, and a fine leader, but a circumspect diplomat he was not. Dís’s eyes shot sideways to fix him with a slightly annoyed look - if the Elves really did intend to offer them some hospitality, getting into a pissing contest with their leader was not the best decision that could be made at this juncture. The Elf spoke again in his tongue, it hardly sounded like real speech to Dís, more like the babbling of water running over stones in a river.  
  
“What is he saying?” Glóin growled, axe at the ready. “Does he offer us insult?”  
  
The wizard stepped in before any blood could be shed. “No, Master Glóin,” Gandalf sighed. “He is offering you _food._ ”  
  
Upon hearing this, the Company broke formation and began speaking amongst themselves. “Do we trust ‘em?” Dwalin asked, face all suspicion as he sized up the Elf Lord.  
  
“Do we have a choice?” Thorin replied, mouth a grim line above his beard.  
  
“If they wanted to do us harm, they would’ve struck before now,” Dís observed calmly and gave Thorin a nudge on the arm. “And keep your head, eh? We don’t have to _trust_ them, better that we don’t, we just need to...get on with it.”  
  
“I did not like his manner when he spoke about our King,” Thorin said quietly, so that only those closest to him could hear.  
  
Dwalin made a noise of agreement in the back of his throat, “Sounded like insolence.”  
  
“I don’t care for his manner at _all_ ,” Dís groused. “But they’ve not shut their doors in our faces and that ranks them better than some of their kind.”  
  
The other members of the Company reached a decision while their King remained looking torn between his old grudge and the opportunity to take advantage of food and shelter. “Ah, well, in that case, lead on,” Glóin said, making his way to the head of the pack as Balin followed behind him.  
  
“What harm will it do?” he shrugged at Thorin, patting his back as he passed. Balin had a wisdom that was rare in their race. Despite his white beard, he was only middle-aged by the standards of their people, but since his youth he had a perpetual calm and clear-eyed vision that made him a valued counselor to the royal family. And so, with Balin’s doleful blessing, the Dwarves of Erebor begrudgingly entered Rivendell.  
  
The Elf who greeted them at the gate, Lindir, made some comment about refreshing themselves before dining. “Would you perhaps like to take advantage of some soap and hot water?” he suggested with an expression that would have been called hopeful, if the dwarves were capable of reading it.  
  
“You said there was food?” Nori asked, raising an eyebrow. The Elf nodded reluctantly and Nori snorted, “Then I’ll wait, if it’s all the same to you.”  
  
“Me too, I’m _starving_ ,” Ori agreed and his eldest brother fixed him with a very stern look.  
  
“You are not _starving_ ,” Dori corrected him. Ori never starved in his life, thank the Creator, but as someone who had gone without food for days in times better forgotten, Dori was not going to stand for such claims.  
  
Nori cocked his head at Dori and folded his arms. “You’re not seriously suggesting we wait to eat, are you?”  
  
“Of course not!” Kíli spoke up, for he was feeling the same hunger pangs Ori was and was not putting off the prospect of a meal. Looking over his shoulder at his mother and uncle he added, “Right?”  
  
“Right,” Thorin confirmed. Their hosts looked momentarily pained, but they nevertheless led them to the a place where they could take their meal.

Lord Elrond specifically requested Thorin’s presence at his own table and, knowing he must now act the  king, he acquiesced. In his heart, he would much rather sit with his friends and traveling companions, but since they agreed to partake of Elvish hospitality, he must now ‘get on with it,’ as his sister said.  
  
Dís was probably unaware of it, but ‘get on with it’ was a particular phrase of hers that was always spoken during times of hardship. It was her own way of fighting back against unfair circumstances, it did not mean she liked being made to do something, be it take less for her smith work than she was owed or clench her fists and bite her tongue when they were insulted and a fight would result in their being run out of town. She was very much like their mother in that way, practical and steadfast. _Will cursing the rain make it stop? Better to weather the storm while it rages,_ Ama would say, _and hope there will be better days to come. There’s no sense in wasting your strength on a foe you cannot conquer._  
  
It was a lesson Dís took to heart that Thorin sometimes thought he failed to learn.

  
As his sister made to join the rest of the Company at the low table that was laid out for them and Thorin grabbed her arm, falling out of step with Gandalf. “You’re not dining with me?” he asked, furrowing his brow.  
  
“I wasn’t invited,” Dís shrugged and grinned at him, looking absolutely _delighted_. She might advise acting more graciously toward their hosts, but that did not mean she was eager to break bread with them. Patting her brother’s hand she spoke to him as if he was one of her sons, “Mind your manners. And don’t lay your weapons on the table.”  
  
None of the Company disarmed before they sat down to eat; such a gesture would be considered rude in a dwarrow-dwelling, but this was _not_ a Dwarvish residence and they were not so blinded by hunger that they would forget to be wary in the presence of those many among them counted as enemies.  
  
Their contempt would prove justified when they saw with what they were expected to satiate their hunger. Dori, happy to see wine on the table once again, was somewhat less disheartened than the others to realize that all they’d been given to eat were vegetables and greens.  
  
“...is this it?” Fíli whispered to his mother, nodding at the unsatisfactory meal laid out before them.  
  
“Can I ask for beer instead?” Kíli asked, leaning down and peering around his brother.  
  
Dís snorted, “You can try, but I don’t think they’ll be very obliging.” So much for Elvish hospitality. Who laid out a meal for guests, weary from the road and offered them table scraps?  
  
Across the table, Dori was urging his youngest brother to broaden his palate. “Try it,” he said, though it must be noted that the leafy greens on his plate were largely untouched. “Just a mouthful.”  
  
“I don’t like green food,” Ori replied distastefully, putting the lettuce back where it came from gingerly, just in case it contained some harmful.  
  
“Where’s the meat?” Dwalin demanded, lifting a handful of greens out of a bowl as if he expected to find a ham hidden beneath them.  
  
The hobbit, as ever, refused to find fault with the place. “It’s not bad,” he said, cheerfully tucking into his salad. “Wine’s very nice, I think.”  
  
“Not bad,” Bofur agreed, knocking back a glass of the fine Elvish wine like it was a slug of gin. Beside him, Bifur was quietly munching away on some greens made brighter with the addition of flower petals. “‘Least one of us is enjoying his supper, eh, cousin?”  
  
Bifur looked up and made a series of gestures with his hands that Bilbo did not understand, so he looked to Bofur for translation.  
  
“Says it’s fine for what it is, being that their ways are different from ours.”  
  
“No accounting for taste,” Bombur said, looking wistfully down at the celery stalks and dandelion greens before him. He’d hoped the Elves, being rumored such a fine people, would have beef, but that was a wish that would go unfulfilled.  
  
“It’s an _insult_ ,” Óin declared, much as his brother had earlier, making a threatening gesture toward a harpist with his ear trumpet.  
  
“I’m sure they don’t mean to insult us,” Balin sighed, gesturing for their healer to keep calm. “Keep your seat.”

Ori seemed struck by a sudden, optimistic notion for there _was_ one vegetable he was happy to eat, as long as it was cut into fat strips and dunked in hot oil first. “Have they got any chips?”  
  
Laughing, Nori ruffled his younger brother’s hair, “I don’t think they’ve got any _spuds_ , Ori. Don’t see a thing on this table that grows underground. I always thought ‘weed-eaters’ was a joke, but I see it’s fitting for their kind.”  
  
Kíli nudged the halfling and smiled at him conspiratorially, “You should give ‘em a lesson in how to throw a dinner party, eh? And Elves are supposed to be all-knowing.”  
  
Bilbo returned the smile, but shook his head, “I wasn’t as good a host as all that, I just happen to keep a well-stocked pantry.”  
  
There was, in fact, a great insult in preparing so paltry a meal for Dwarves. It broke all the rules of hospitality which were so important to their race. Feed guests better than you would feed yourself, even if you are on your last cup of flour. If they make a request of you, do your uttermost to honor it. Life in the mountains could be hard and life on the road was even more difficult. There were long weeks when the hunting was poor and they had nothing to eat but the same grasses and meager vegetation the Elves provided for them. To see these relics of their past made some of the Company remember those old hunger pangs and called to mind how low they were brought and how much they struggled. Dís had lost her appetite entirely and got up from the table.  
  
Dwalin’s head swiveled around to look at her. “Where are you going?” he asked, not willing to lose one of their number in this foreign, unsettling place.  
  
She ran a hand through her hair, losing a braid that was matted with the grease of unwashed hair and the grime from sleeping on the ground. “Stretching my legs,” Dís replied. “And I might treat myself to a bath, since we’ve got the chance.” Dwalin’s rough-hewn countenance was twisted in a scowl and she patted the sword at her side. “Don’t worry about me, I can take care of myself well enough.”  
  
Their supper might have been poor fare for Dwarves, but the mood was more congenial by far than that at the head table. Thorin was just as annoyed by their meal as his companions were, but he had no one to commiserate with since Gandalf and Elrond were tucking in without a care in the world. In the golden age of Erebor, Thorin knew that they entertained Elvish visitors, he saw them in their halls, but he did not engage with them overmuch. Did they feast with them, he wondered? Had this Lord Elrond seen the splendor of a Dwarvish feast, meat served hot from the spits, falling off the bone, juices dripping down beards and sopped up with crusty loaves of bread? And he thought _this_ sufficient to feed a company of their race?  
  
“The sword you bear is familiar to me,” Lord Elrond said to Thorin, his eye upon the orcish blade tucked in his scabbard. “May I see it?”  
  
Thorin’s immediate reaction, as was befitting a dwarf prince, was to snarl and threaten the Elven lord that the only time his hand would touch the blade would be in its being cleft from his arm. Luckily, he held his tongue and only hesitated a moment before handing it over silently. By rights, he should not have taken the sword to the table, but old habits died hard and his hatred for the Elven race was strong than the recommendations of etiquette.  
  
“This is Orcrist, the Goblin Cleaver,” Elrond informed him, pulling the blade free from its scabbard that he might observe it closely. “A famous blade, forged by the High Elves of the West. My kin. May it serve you well.”

Just outside the ring of their uncomfortable meeting, Thorin spied his sister, leaning against an archway. She caught his eye and brought her left hand to her mouth, lowering it in an arc away from her face. _Thanks_ , was the meaning of the sign, but he noted that her right arm was by her side, not over her heart to convey sincerity. _Be gracious_ , she advised him without words. _Even if you cannot feel gratitude._  
  
Dwarves, in general, were a straightforward race, known for their direct speech and almost brutal honesty. Thorin had difficulty with expressing false feelings, lies were in conflict with his nature. Like the oaken branch he still carried with him, he did not bend easily, but certain powerful winds could uproot the mightiest tree. The winds of poverty which long breathed down his neck the icy threat of _hunger_ and _disease_ and, worst of all, _homelessness_ were enough to make the proud warrior prince affect humility. Nothing moved him more than the suffering of those he loved. Never could he forget the sound of his sister crying in the night, begging to go home until he gathered her in his arms and soothed her with a gentle tune, nor would the image of his brother’s pale, thin face fade from his memory.  
  
He had squeezed and pressed his pride down within him then, nearly choking with the effort, as he journeyed among Men, working under them if he had to, accepting his few coins with thanks on his lips, but never in his heart. Thorin found himself crushing his pride again, just enough to nod and accept the sword from the Elf's hand but he spoke not a word.  
  
Thorin looked beyond Elrond, to look upon Dís again. He meant to give her a wry expression, a small smile as if to say, _Do you see, sister? I am following your sound advice._  
  
But the place where she stood was empty and Dís was nowhere to be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel so BAD for Thorin in this part of the movie, he's with this race he hates, being forced to do all of these things that run contrary to his nature, but he shuts up and deals with it because sometimes you have to grit your teeth and bear it. Good for you, Thorin! And Gandalf was bitching about how stubborn you were earlier, pssh, like he knows anything about it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where the fic strays into PG-13 territory, I'm going to put a **trigger warning: voyeurism** here, just in case. You can absolutely skip this chapter in case any of you folks don't care to read semi-sexiness about hairy dwarf ladies, you won't miss any major plot stuff.

Turned out their hosts were awfully insistent that their guests ‘refresh themselves,’ as they put it. For the average dwarf, there was nothing more refreshing than a hot meal and a good long sleep, but Elves seemed to think the relaxing powers of a hot bath were unmatched. There were bars of lavender soap and towels placed within every chamber. It was hard soap, finer than the sort she made at home with tallow and wood ash, very floral smelling. It’d do, Dís decided, taking up the bathing implements and towels.  
  
There was a secluded spot near a little falls, rocky, which was good for washing out her clothes, which was her first order of business. She’d brought an extra tunic and pair of trousers, but since her clothes were holding up well enough, they remained untouched at the bottom of her pack. Dís shrugged out of her heavy, fur-lined coat and lay her armor, sword and scabbard down upon it, pulling her tunic off over her head in one quick movement. She tugged her boots off as well, keeping one of her knives close by, just in case. Guests they may be, but she was not a trusting soul by nature and experience. It was better to be safe than sorry.  
  
Soap in hand, she set to scrubbing her tunic out against some obliging rocks, soaking her trousers in the process, but they were next to go and it hardly mattered. Laundering clothes was her most loathed chore, but cleaning one’s own clothes was far better than trying to scrub a household’s worth. The steady rushing of the water around her carried the dirt and dust away, leaving replaced by water so clean and clear she could see every rock at the bottom of the shallow pool.  
  
The tunic was laid out on an obliging bush; she needed to work quickly before the sun set and left her with damp, cold garments to wear the rest of the night. Once again glancing around to ensure privacy, Dís stripped bare, trousers and underthings getting the same hard scrub as her shirt. The water was warm enough from the sunlight that it was pleasant to step into, lapping around her hips as she unfastened her hair clasps and shook her braids out and ducked to submerge herself over her head in the swift moving water. It was like slipping into a hot bath (rare and luxurious, even for a daughter of kings) and for the first time since stepping foot on Elven lands, she began to relax.  
  
So relaxed was she that Dís entirely failed to realize that she was no longer alone as she bathed.

Dwalin, after seeing her disappear from the veranda where they took their meal (if you could call a mouthful of grass a _meal_ , which he did not), began to get antsy. They were in a strange place and he was not keen on any of the Company disappearing off on their own without a fellow to watch their backs. Lass even left her axe behind at the table, so he decided to bring it to her, searching all over the damn place for her, getting more and more anxious by the minute, though his anxiety manifested itself as annoyance and grumbling.  
  
“I’ll give that lass a piece of my mind for her supper,” he vowed to himself, attracting the attention of a few Elves wafting through the corridor, but he ignored them. “Hope she has a good appetite for it. What’s she think she’s doing, vanishing like a thief? This isn’t the Blue Thrice-Damned Mountains, can’t trust none of these weed-eaters farther than you can throw ‘em.”  
  
His mumblings were drowned out entirely by the noise of a nearby waterfall - another tactical nightmare. With the constant noise of the water, how was anyone supposed to know when they were being set upon. Lord Elrond must have the place guarded, but Dwalin did not notice any sentries standing guard. Either they were neglectful of their duty or so well-concealed as to be invisible. Neither scenario was to his liking.  
  
Squinting at a pile of clothes and weapons abandoned at the water’s edge, he went still as a stone for those were Dís’s things, but where in Durin’s name was _she_? Dwalin was a battle-hardened warrior and did not lose his composure, even when the spectre of death was staring him down with its malicious black eyes. His heart did not leap into his throat at the very real prospect that his princess might be drowned, dead or kidnapped - no, that only happened when he caught sight of her emerging unharmed from beneath the water, utterly blind to his presence.  
  
Dís flipped her long hair, sopping wet, onto her back where the tips of the heavy black waves brushed the top of the water pooling just below her waist. Dwalin swallowed hard. He should go. He should avert his eyes and give her the privacy she clearly thought she was enjoying, but he was rooted to the spot, his mind at war with itself, as it had been for the past ninety years where his princess was concerned.  
  
For instance, his first thought was not for her beauty, the way the light caught the drops in her beard that ran slid down her throat as she tilted her head back to wash her hair. His first thoughts were that he’d taught her better than this, that she should know better than to make herself so vulnerable in uncertain territory. If she wanted to bathe so badly, she ought to have had someone come along with her - she was not a modest woman of Man whose form was to be forever veiled from the eyes of others. Better by far to be unclothed among friends than unguarded among enemies.  
  
That was his initial thought, but it quickly gave way to sheer admiration, coupled with the guilty knowledge that he should alert her to his presence, at least, not skulk in the shadows like some lech. But she was so damn _beautiful_ , he could not tear his eyes from her, nor did he trust himself to speak aloud with an unwavering voice.  
  
She stood a fair distance from him, half turned away so he could see the muscles of her broad back and thick arms working beneath her skin as she scrubbed days’ accumulation of filth from her long, dark hair. The water and soap and dirt ran down her body like rivers, catching now and then in the creases and indentations in her flesh. Glistening in the patch of hair on her chest, curving down her breasts, meandering to the curling dark trail that led down her belly. Dwalin’s tongue darted out to wet his lips his lips and he stared openly, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. The tattoos she sported, not as brazenly as he, were merely dark lines and splotches against her skin at this distance, but he knew them all without needed to look at them up close.

Dís’s entire history was written on her skin and he’d been so much a part of her history that he knew the story of each and every one. The largest of the marks were the two stylized axes on her back. They were crossed and as such marked her out as a master weaponsmith. Five braided bands wrapped around her upper arms, three on the right, two on the left, one for each member of her family gone on to the halls of their ancestors.  
  
The three on her right arm were for her father, brother and grandfather, lost at Azanulbizar. They were the first marks ever set in her skin, she was little more than a dwarfling when she had them done. Dwalin was her confidante in that endeavor, for Thorin probably thought her too young for tattoos, but she insisted and he agreed that she was grown enough to wear her grief and pride on her skin, that the world might know what their people suffered and survived. Those two bands on her left arm were for her mother and husband, dead in the Ered Luin. The braids for Thrór and Frerin were black, interwoven with red pigment: slain in battle. The braids for Queen Freya, Thráin and Víli were entirely black, meaning that they had not fallen beneath axe, arrow or sword. The Queen her mother died after suffering a long illness in a land she hated. Her husband died a miserable death, crushed by the very rocks he daily mined. And Thráin? Only their wizard, of all living creatures might know what became of him and he was keeping his own counsel on that matter.  
  
There were still more. Two symbols for fertility, one on each hip, hard-won trophies of two live births. Beneath those were two runes which stood for her sons’ names - not their True Names, of course, for they would never be scrawled casually across the skin, but the names they went by daily, Fíli and Kíli. Both named for a father Kíli never knew and Fíli barely remembered.  
  
And one, blood-red, the seal of her family inked over her heart. It was unfair that so much of her body should be covered over with symbols of death. She lost so much in such a short time, all those who were memorialized on her flesh passed on before she’d reached her hundredth year. Dís was little more than a girl, barely into the first blush of womanhood and already an exile, an orphan and a widow.  
  
How she found the will to work, raise her sons and keep a smile on her face after such a life as she’d led was something their neighbors in the Blue Mountains marveled at, but Dwalin simply expected. Dís was a remarkable girl who grew to be an extraordinary woman. And she’d held his heart in her strong hands before he realized he’d lost it.  
  
Long ago, in another life it almost seemed now, Thorin made his first and last comment on the subject. It was some miserably hot summer night when friends gathered together because they were canny enough to know that suffering together was nearly always preferably to unhappy loneliness. Despite the sticky humidity, Dís and Víli lay close together on the grass, their fingers interlaced, eyes gazing skyward at the stars winked above their heads. He said something that made her laugh - he was always making her laugh - and Dwalin found himself staring, much as he was now, knowing he should not and unable to look away.  
  
Thorin was curt in his observations, it was not his way to speak about his own feelings overmuch and he was loathe to needle others to do the same. He simply stood beside his friend, saw what he was seeing and asked, simply, “You going to do something about that?”  
  
There was no mistaking his meaning, but Dwalin tore his eyes from his dearest friend’s sister, who he’d known since she was a babe in arms and the stoic mask slipped, allowing a glimmer of embarrassment and pain to bleed too before he shut it away again behind dark eyes and an impassive expression. “Don’t see as there’s much I can do,” Dwalin’s shoulders hitched it a shrug. It wasn’t him that she wanted. Simple and terrible as that.  
  
Thorin hesitated and looked as if there was something he _dearly_ wanted to say in reply, but something in his friend’s stance made him shut his mouth and nod tightly. “Right, then,” was all the reply he made. And that was that. The next year Dís and Víli were married and soon thereafter Fíli was born and gave them all such happiness.

Dwalin remained, where else could he be? He would live and die by his king’s side and where Thorin was, so too was Dís. That was how it always was and, even now, always would be. Dís was devoted to her brother, he to her in equal measure and Dwalin loved them both with all his heart and soul. Thorin, his brother and Dís...both more and less than a sister. Oh, aye, it pained his heart to know she had nothing but familial affection for him, but it was enough to know that she did love him. Once she was married, it was almost easier to bear, for he knew for a fact she would never be his.  
  
Then Víli died and he, selfish bastard that he was, dared to _hope_. And sometimes she gave him cause. Just that morning, in the troll cave she looked up at him with those sapphire eyes of hers and spoke to him in that half-teasing way of hers that drove him mad. And he blathered on, compared her to mithril and something shone in those blue gemstones, a fire the glimpsed every now and again, but of course, Thorin walked by and then they were too busy running for their lives for him to decipher what she’d meant by it.  
  
But watching her now, his heart sank like a stone when he saw her take up a small, sharp blade to trim her beard. Thorin cut his after they lost the Mountain and again after the battle claimed so many of his family. Dís only cut her beard after her husband died, a mark of her widowed state more obvious than the lines on her left arm. She was not courting. She would not love again. A heaviness settling on his shoulders, Dwalin reflected that she was indeed armed and would likely come to no harm and, as such, he had no business being where he was. So he slunk away, back to their companions, weighed down with the thoughts he could not unburden and ought not entertain.  
  
What he did not see was Dís pause, staring at her rippling and shifting reflection in the water. She was not so very old, she reflected. With her face clean and the lines around her mouth and eyes smoothed as her worries fell away, she might even look fairly comely. Perhaps...perhaps her period of mourning would soon run its course. The image of a dark eyed, rough-chiseled face seemed to impose itself over her reflection. _Strong as steel, lovely as silver, rare as diamonds,_ he said and there was no mistaking the naked admiration in his eyes.  
  
Dís noticed such looks from Dwalin before, but too late - no. That was not true. Not too late, but too early. She was little more than a child when she married and wrapped up in childish notions of what happiness ought to be. She loved her husband, of course, _everyone_ loved her husband, he was joy itself given stout form, loving arms and a hearty laugh. But she cherished Dwalin and always had. Yes, she loved him first, but she was too young and afraid to make anything of it.  
  
Some little noise or movement in her peripheral vision caused her head to snap up and her grip to tighten on her knife as she scanned the area, looking for whoever it was intruding on her in the descending twilight. At first she saw no one, but then she glimpsed a form as familiar to her as her own body making a slow, plodding march away from her.  
  
Her lips pursed, but she could not be angry, even if she had no idea how long Dwalin stood by, watching her bathe. Immediately she wondered if he did so to protect her, because he thought her too incapable to wield a blade and defend herself, but she knew from the slumped set of his shoulders, that her safety was not foremost on his mind. If it was, he would have announced himself, rolled his eyes, loudly lectured her about vigilance, all boredly superior tones and _haven’t I taught you better, lassie?_  
  
But he was silent. Tried not to be seen and Dís could not help a small smile from curving her lips; well, she hoped he enjoyed the view, at least. So. He wanted her. She’d always wanted him. Maybe, after all this time, it really was just that simple.  
  
While she still had light enough to see by, Dís cut her beard, the short dark trimmings carried away from her, going the way of the dust and dirt earlier. Not now, but someday. If they were successful in this attempt to reclaim the Mountain then surely, _surely_ anything was possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Then again, there were probably some of you who read the note at the beginning and thought, "Voyeurism? Awesome!" which is also totally cool. I hope you enjoyed our (incredibly tame) erotic side story with Dís and Dwalin. The inspiration for her crossed axe back tattoo came from the companion book with the picture of shirtless!Thorin blacksmithing where he has that design on his chest. Also, it is absolutely my headcanon that Dwarf women invented the bra and kept it secret ;-) So Dís enjoys the benefit of awesome foundation garments.


	15. Chapter 15

“And where have _you_ been, little miss?” Bofur asked with mock-severity, hands on his hips like an irate schoolmarm. The tables had been cleared and the sun was dipping down, flooding the valley with ruby red light when Dís returned, hair still damp and curling. “Had our poor Dwalin beside himself with worry, he went on the hunt for you and all!”  
  
“Did he?” Dís asked mildly, flickering her eyes toward him without really looking at him. If she caught his eye, she knew he’d immediately realize that she caught him spying and would be ashamed. And she’d never want that.

  
Dwalin just grunted in a way that could have been a disavowal or affirmation, he was as intent on not meeting Dís’s eyes as she was not meeting his. Bofur watched the pair of them with a slow, sly smile on his face and said, laughing, “Well, you smell like you rolled through someone’s flower patch. Taking advantage of our host’s strange brand o’hospitality?”  
  
“Aye,” she said, smiling at him and tossing an unused bar of soap in his direction. “You lot'd do well to follow my lead.”  
  
“Might at that,” Bofur said, giving the soap a contemplative sniff. Silently one of the Elves emerged from behind one of their tall, slender pillars. Earlier, Dís had trouble reading their expressions, but there was no mistaking the sheer relief from this one.  
  
“Permit me to show you the baths, I am only sorry I was unaware of my Lady’s intentions,” the Elf apologized, inclining his head toward Dis. Evidently she was not as anonymous here as she thought she was - likely Thorin mentioned they paid insult to his sister by not addressing her by her proper title. She did not stand on ceremony with her friends, neither she nor her brother were naturally inclined to put on airs. If she had to put money on it, she’d bet he only mentioned something so he would not be forced to take a meal with Lord Elrond without an ally.  
  
“No trouble, I managed well enough on my own,” Dís lifted one shoulder in a shrug at the Elf. Man or woman of the race, she could hardly say, it was beardless and wearing a long gown, but showed no signs of a bosom beneath it, or not such signs as she recognized. Having been on the receiving end of wrong guesses all her life, she did not particularly feel the need to gain retributions for wrongs paid against her by potentially insulting this Elf. What would be the point?  
  
“Where are my lads, then?” she asked, not seeing her brother nor her sons among their numbers.  
  
Ori replied, “Looking at the rooms, Missus, Lord Elrond offered to show Mister Thorin and Fíli and Kíli went with him.” Dís smiled at the lad; even if they did retake the Mountain and sat in their throne room once again, she did not doubt that she and her brother would be ‘Mister and Missus’ to little Ori and she’d not have it any other way.  
  
“I could take you to them,” the Elf said reluctantly; clearly the creature had its heart set on pointing the rest of the Company in the direction of the bath.  
  
“No need,” Dís waved the offer away. “Just point me in the right direction, I’ll stumble upon ‘em soon or later.”  
  
“Want me to go with you?” Dwalin asked. It was odd how he sometimes worded his statements as questions, obviously what he meant to say was ‘I’m going with you’ because he took a step toward her.  
  
Dís shook her head and smiled up at him slyly, “Nah, have a bath, it’ll do you a world of good. Honestly, you reek of troll and stables, no wonder those orcs were breathing down our necks, their wargs probably smelled us miles off.”  
  
The halls of Rivendell were eerily silent. Dís was unused to silence. In the mountains they lived one on top of the other and rock might be thick, but dwarvish singing and dancing was noisy, so too were the arguments of couples, the crying of children and the general hustle and bustle of an active community. Sometimes she would hear voices, but they were hushed murmurs that stopped when the sound of her boots drew too near. Queer race, Elves. So unlike her own people she had no idea what to make of them.  
  
Dwarrow voices, though, they carried and she quickly heard two very familiar tone speaking behind one set of tall doors left ajar.

Lord Elrond was having a suite of rooms prepared for his guests, laden with the ubiquitous soap and towels, but also candles and real beds, which the Company had not seen since their arrival at Bag End so many weeks ago. It was a sight that should have filled them with pleasure, but it only made them wary. Thorin was inspecting the rest of the rooms with Gandalf and Elrond, but his nephews opted to stay behind and look at their quarters.  
  
These chambers were so different from their little house in the West that the young dwarves did not know what to make of them. The room itself was huge with a high, vaulted ceiling. Probably damned expensive to heat, was Fíli’s thought on the subject. And why make the bedroom so big? In dwarvish settlements, the sitting room was the largest in the house, a place for eating, smoking, working, in short, _gathering_. Did Elves host parties in their rooms? It'd be awful unseemly.  
  
Kíli regarded the bed especially doubtfully. “That hardly looks like a place for sleeping,” he observed, lifting a flimsy sheet. “How are you supposed to keep warm?” In their house (never _home_ he'd been told from his earliest days) in the Blue Mountains, the beds were piled high with blankets and furs, fires roared in the hearth and if it was one of those truly cold nights when you felt the frost in your bones and your teeth rattled from shivering,  no one would look twice if everyone in the household squeezed into one bed.  
  
This bed was...vast. Bigger than his and Fíli's room and only intended for one of those towering Elves, probably. Though he and his brother were intended to share it, it still seemed improbably large.  
  
Fíli pressed a hand into the mattress and removed it quickly when it sank inches deep into the fabric. “Is it some kind of trap, d'you think?” he asked his brother. Rather than risking his hand, he tossed one of his swords atop the bed and watched it too fall into the downy depths. “It just...sucks you in, smothers you, maybe?”  
  
“Like quicksand? It'd be clever,” Kíli agreed, eyes going wide at the prospect that their hosts might kill them in the night under the guise of offering them food and lodging. Thorin said Elves had no honor and this would prove it. “Do you think we should tell someone?”  
  
“Probably warn them, aye,” Fíli said, rescuing his sword from the bed, but neither brother had the chance to go looking for someone to share their observations with because their mother heard the entire conversation.  
  
“No need to sound the alarm, loves,” she said, unable to suppress a smile. “I don’t think they mean to smother us in our sleep.”  
  
“We’re not sleeping here anyway,” her brother's voice sounded behind her and Thorin strode in, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Beds aren’t suitable.”  
  
Dís gave him a skeptical look. Her aversion to Elves was nearly as strong as her brother’s, but it was fairly clear to her that they meant them no harm. Did he mean to scorn every gesture of hospitality during their stay? If he sought to turn all Elvenkind against them to prove a point, she was going to have to advise him that it was not a terribly practical tactic to take. “Why aren’t they suitable?’  
  
“Too weak. Take a good look at the frame, it’ll splinter if one of us tries sleeping on it, never mind two or more.” Thorin seemed so sure in his statement, that Dís had to bite back a smile.

“Know from experience, do you?” she asked, looking him over out of the corners of her eye. No blush stole over his face, but Thorin did incline his head and look down in a chagrined expression and Dís laughed aloud, her sons sniggering as well.  
  
“Broke the bed, eh, Uncle?” Fíli teased and Kíli giggled at the innuendo.  
  
Dís was hardly any better. “There are _so_ many things I’d like to say right now, you ought to stand in awe of my restraint,” she said, practically biting her tongue to stem the deluge of bad jokes bubbling up in her mind.  
  
Thorin’s lips twitched, but he successfully fought back a smile. “Just further proof our races shouldn’t have aught to do with one another,” he said. “Anyway, it can be broken up for firewood, _Lord_ Elrond says there’s to be no cutting of the trees in the wood.”  
  
Kíli pulled a face. “Why not?”  
  
“Elves are peculiar about trees,” his mother shrugged. No idea _why_ , you could dig them up, cut them down and plant another one easy as anything. Trees weren’t like mountains where the earth yielded only a few of her treasures and once they were gone, they were gone forever. Guard your mines jealously, that was just common sense, but forbidding the felling of trees? Utterly beyond her ken to understand.  
  
“Bombur’ll be pleased about that,” Fíli remarked. “He told me that he still had some sausages we could cook up, once the Elves were abed. Said he didn’t want to insult ‘em, but there was no reason to go to bed hungry.”  
  
“Good old Bombur,” Thorin nodded approvingly. The Broadbeams had no stake in this quest, they had never seen Erebor before, they actually left their homeland behind to come on this journey. It had been many years since they struck up a friendship with the miners and it was a strong bond they shared. If Thorin was honest with himself, he would admit he had more fondness for those foreign dwarves than he did for his kin in the Iron Hills.  
  
When they initially settled in the Blue Mountains and Dís struck up a friendship with them, he was mildly disapproving. His mother, especially, did not like her daughter spending time with, as she put it, “illiterate paupers,” but Thorin privately thought, aside from some learning, they were not so different from their neighbors. She did not live long enough to see her daughter marry one of those aforementioned paupers, but he liked to believe her ire would have cooled. Víli was a good soul and how could she possibly feel anything but approval for the man who fathered such grandchildren as she would have had if only she lived?  
  
Then again, his mother was very proud. If she refused to acknowledge Fíli and Kíli...no, it did not bear thinking of. His face must have gone hard in contemplation because his sister was looking at him oddly, head cocked in concern.  
  
“Where’s Bilbo gone off to?” she asked, evidently repeating herself. “He wasn’t with you?”  
  
“No,” Thorin shook his head. “Why would he be?”  
  
“Because he wasn’t with the others - they’ve all gone to wash up, by the bye, it’s why I came looking for you.”  
  
“Oh, are you trying to tell us something?” Fíli asked, sidling up to his mother and attempting to put an arm around her which she dodged.  
  
“Not trying,” Dís said, fending off another almost-embrace from Kíli. “Telling: You reek, have a bath.”  
  
“You weren’t bothered this morning,” Kíli reminded her.  
  
“Too right, I wasn’t because I smelled as foul as you,” she grinned. “Go on, I’ll find Mister Baggins on my own. He’ll probably be easier to convince to wash up than you.”  
  
The brothers left to rejoin their fellows, but Thorin stayed behind as Dís predicted he would. “Did he have anything to say about the map?”  
  
“He did not, I said nothing about it, though Gandalf tried to goad me into it more than once,” he replied, his voice all frustration. Dís sighed and ran her fingers through her unbound hair. On the subject of the map, she knew not what to do. None of them could decipher its secrets - their forefathers were careful in its writing and probably meant for it to be unreadable to all but a select few. It was the way of their people to keep secrets even from one another, if it meant ensuring the safety of all.

The only people to whom that map meant anything, her father and grandfather, were dead. They lived their lives sure that one day they would reclaim their rightful home. Proud dwarves that they were, it probably never occurred to them that they would not lead the quest for the Lonely Mountain themselves. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Dís reflected sadly.  
  
“No,” Thorin shook his head and let out a breath, sagging slightly and looking very tired. “It wasn’t.”  
  
“What are you going to do?” Dís asked him gently.  
  
Her brother looked up at her and smiled slightly helplessly. “I was hoping you might guide me,” he replied and there was no shame in his voice.  
  
Dís was decades younger than her brother and, for the bulk of their wandering was very much the little sister. She was a tagalong, always underfoot and, consequently, in need of protection until she was old enough and skilled enough to wield a blade without stabbing herself with it. Long nights she’d spent in her brother’s arms, letting him lull her to sleep with sweet songs and stories. Frerin too, though they were closer in age than he was to Thorin, was her protector.  
  
Then the battle in front of the gate of Moria came and they truly lost everything. Thorin was troubled, grieved and guilty and simply haunted by all that he’d seen and all that was taken from him. He was a brave dwarf and a noble one, but he was still so young himself and to lose a father, a grandfather and brother, to take on the mantle of king to their shattered people was, at times, a burden too much to bear. Full of doubt by day, he hid his fear and unhappiness, putting on a stoic front that he still wore wrapped around him like armor around those he did not trust. By night, his composure slipped and he had bad dreams.  
  
Still a dwarfling, by all rights a child, Dís realized that her brother could not go on alone, as he was, unable to unburden himself. Dwalin and Balin were still reeling from the loss of their father and their mother grieving for her son and king and husband. All of them looked to him for guidance for, friend, cousin, son though he was, he was also their king. And a king, by definition, had no equal. For all her youth, she understood this, but more than that, she knew her brother should not carry his burden by himself. It was a role Frerin might have filled, had he lived, or perhaps a wife could have taken up, if Thorin was of a mind to court. But Frerin was dead and her brother had no sweethearts; in a very real way, she was all he had left.  
  
And so it had been since. At first, she filled a role of comforter in her brother’s life. Where once he held her and sang her to sleep, she wrapped her arms around his neck, or laced her fingers with his when she sensed growing tension within him. She sang him songs in the evenings so he would not be troubled when he lay down to sleep. She braided his hair to relax him and threw herself into her apprenticeship , learning their trade quickly and completely so that Thorin would not do the work of two dwarves to earn their keep.  
  
Little by little, he opened up to her more than he had in the past when she was only his little sister who needed protection from the worst of their journey. He confided in her, letting her hear his fears as he once heard and soothed away hers. Sometimes he asked for her advice; she had not Balin’s age, education or experience, but her judgment was sound and, above all else, Thorin trusted her. And his trust was everything to her. _I'll take care of him_ , she vowed one long ago night and she meant to keep her promise as long as their was life and breath within her.  
  
Dís was quiet as she pondered the matter of the map. “My first instinct is to say nothing about it,” she replied honestly. “You said yourself, the Elves will not approve and I don’t fancy hacking our way out of here if they try to use force to stop us.”  
  
Thorin nodded; those were his thoughts precisely, but his sister went on.  
  
“But if we can’t get into the Mountain, what point is there in going on?” she continued. “Say we reach Erebor. Our claim is just, no one can argue that, but your key is not meant for the front gate. We would have no way in - and if that monster is still inside, we need to be careful how we go about gaining entry anyway.”

He cursed under his breath. “Skulking around looking for side-doors as if we were beggars,” Thorin muttered angrily. “It isn’t - ” but his stopped himself and simply glared at nothing. _It isn’t fair_ , he wanted to say, but realized how childish he sounded. Very few things in his life up until this point had been fair, one would think he would be used to it, but the disappointment never got any easier. If it had, they would still be in the Ered Luin.  
  
“It’s not,” Dís agreed, as ever, knowing his mind without requiring too many words from him. “But it is what it is. Anyway, I’m sure Gandalf will make the decision to tell the Elf Lord soon enough, with or without your consent.”  
  
Thorin snorted. “You don’t like him.”  
  
“That obvious?” she asked rhetorically. “But I know he’s needed. The way I see it, I don’t care for horse shit either, but I know a pony makes for better travel and you can’t have one without the other.”  
  
Her brother laughed and Dís was gratified to hear it. “Quite a wordsmith, you are,” he said, patting her back fondly. “Ever consider getting another tattoo?”  
  
“Two crossed quills?’ she grinned back at him. “Might do at that.” Resting a hand on her brother on the shoulder she reassured him, “I’m sure it’ll be clear to you when the time’s right. For now, go on, have a wash, it might clear your head. I’ll see if I can't find that burglar of ours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm breaking this section up into two chapters, it was only going to be one, with a Dis+Thorin and Dis+Bilbo discussion, but the Durin fam just LOVES to talk, so it got a little long. In case any of you are curious and want to learn more about the turning point in Dis and Thorin's relationship from more traditional big brother and little sister to what we see today, check out _Bent, Not Broken_ , if you haven't already.


	16. Chapter 16

Rather than finding the burglar, Dís was displeased to encounter Gandalf and Lord Elrond striding down the corridor, heads bowed in deep conversation. The former smiled broadly when he saw her while the latter inclined his head respectfully. “My Lady,” the Elf greeted her. “I apologize for not showing you the respect your position demands. By the last account I heard of your people, the prince and princess had only the one son.”  
  
Not all-knowing after all, Dís thought to herself. And not too preoccupied with other races either, if the last time he heard tell of her family Frerin had not even been born. Regardless, a lack of interest in their affairs was better than malice, so Dís managed to keep her expression neutral, accepting the apology and replying, “I’ll not take offence where none was meant.” That courtesy being paid, she fixed her gaze on Gandalf and asked, “Have you seen our hobbit?”  
  
“We just left him,” the wizard smiled pleasantly, as though he hadn’t any idea that Dís spent most of the day imagining increasingly gory deaths that he might suffer. “He’s very happily ensconced in Lord Elrond’s library - would you like me to take you to him?”  
  
“No need, just tell me where it is, I’ll find it myself,” she answered him immediately. Dís had absolutely no desire to spend any time with the wizard alone, for she’d likely give him a thoroughly overdue tongue lashing. Mercifully, neither Gandalf nor Lord Elrond did anything as absurd as insisting she ought to be accompanied anywhere, they simply told her where she might find Mister Baggins and bid her good evening.  
  
The library was easier to find than the bedrooms had been, it was absolutely _vast_ , the walls covered in shelves piled to groaning with books, parchment and scrolls. Dís had never seen such a place in her life, not since the mountains fell. Elves being so long-lived, it only made sense that their histories would take up walls, but the sight was impressive nevertheless. And in the midst of it all was their hobbit, lying on his stomach like a child with a picture book, only his nose was pressed against a massive tome, eyes scanning the words as his quill worked its way down a long, blank ream of paper.  
  
Bilbo did not look up when Dís walked in, nor when she coughed to announce her presence. Huh. Must be some read. Crouching down before him, she stared at the top of his curly head for a minute, eyes sliding sideways to observe the quick, confident way his quill darkened the page with neat script. She’d never taken their hobbit for a scholar, he was just full of surprises.  
  
“Hey,” she said and Bilbo jumped, ink dotting the page. Grimacing involuntarily - she’d not meant to _frighten_ the little chap, after all, she apologized, “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”  
  
“That’s quite alright,” Bilbo replied, blowing on the parchment to dry the ink and prevent it smearing. “I was rather preoccupied.”  
  
“I noticed,” Dís grinned and the hobbit, recognizing that she wasn’t criticizing him, chuckled as well.  
  
As he looked at her more closely his eyes went wide and he did a bit of a double-take. “Oh!” he said, finding something in her countenance that surprised him. “Erm, you, er...cut your - ah, tidied... Well. You look very nice.”  
  
Dís’s eyes narrowed slightly at the reference to the fact that she’d trimmed her beard. No Dwarf would draw attention to such a thing, certainly no one would ever comment that she looked better for it. It was like telling a woman of Man she looked fetching in her widow’s weeds. Simply not done.  
  
Before she could rake him over the coals, Dís recalled that Hobbits, like Elves  did not - or could not - grow facial hair and probably thought even a gentleman with a beard was unbecoming. As she had with Elrond, Dís took no offence where none was meant and just smoothed a hand over her short beard somewhat self-consciously. In her youth, she preferred a single plait - when she could be bothered to plait it rather than fix a few beads and go on with her day. She was not fussy by nature. One concession to vanity was her lack of a mustache, it didn’t suit her, made her nose look too small.

“Those of our women who have lush beards are counted the loveliest,” she said, not scornfully, but meaningfully enough that Mr. Baggins would know he had not paid her a compliment. The halfling turned very pink around the cheeks and ears, but Dís lowered herself to sit cross-legged in front of him. His face, she noted, was clean and his hair freshly washed. “Found the baths, did you?”  
  
“Oh, yes,” Bilbo said with obvious relief. Fauntlings might prefer being covered in mud with twigs in their hair, but he’d not gone more than a day without bathing since he was a tween and to be constantly filthy dimmed his spirits. Now his eyes shone as brightly as his honey-colored hair in the candlelight. “Feeling much more like myself again. And Lord Elrond was kind enough to let me leaf through his books - have you ever seen such a place in your life?”  
  
“Never,” Dís replied truthfully.  
  
“I’ve always dreamed of coming here,” the hobbit continued. Either the rejuvinating power of the baths of Rivendell were much understated in the world or he’d had too much of Elvish wine for his constitution to bear unaffected for Bilbo never spoke so much in Dís’s presence, he still seemed slightly wary of them even after all this time. “My mother, she traveled when she was young, farther than any hobbit ever ventured away from the Shire, so it’s said. She used to tell me wonderful stories, of Elves and their cities, far away in hidden valleys. After she died...well, I won’t say I forgot, I never could. I just tucked it away, but to be here...”  
  
Bilbo trailed off, his blush darkening, remembering that he spoke to one of royal blood who likely did not care to hear his ramblings. But when he looked up Dís’s expression was open an interested and she gestured for him to go on.  
  
“I just wish she had a chance to come here. That’s all.” Smiling to himself, Bilbo added, “She would have been out the door at first light if you’d come calling when she was mistress of Bag End, no mistake.”  
  
It was clear from the way he spoke that his mother was dead. “What was her name?” Dís asked curiously. It was an innocuous question, not too prying. Some folks could be awfully nosy when inquiring about the dead and she tried to be respectful and not ask for more information than people were willing to share.  
  
“Belladonna,” Bilbo replied promptly then smiled a private sort of smile, as if he was recalling a joke that only he himself would find humorous. “The remarkable daughter of Old Took - that’s what people always said about her, that she was remarkable.”  
  
“She sounds it,” Dís said warmly, pleased to see that Bilbo held his mother in such high esteem. Their burglar was a strange creature, at times he seemed as cantankerous as an old man, but now he was softer in demeanor, almost like a child with his smiles and eager eyes. They all had a bit of the sage and the dwarfling within them, she supposed. Children could be wise and old men very foolish, she’d certainly seen enough proof of that in her lifetime. “So, you stopped trying to run away and became a scholar, then?”  
  
“Yes, something like that. It was more respectable,” he shrugged and the smile turned self-deprecating. "I had my books and maps - until Gandalf visited my smial, I thought that was the closest I’d get to Rivendell.”  
  
That was Mr. Baggins’s quest completed, she supposed, for this was the land he’d dreamed of coming to all his life and here he was. Dís did not understand his fascination with this valley of Elves, but the burning desire to see a land you’d only heard of in stories resonated very much within her. Fíli and Kíli embarked upon this journey in much the same state, a bit of wanderlust coupled with the yearning for a home they knew of only from stories and songs re-told in a cramped little cottage in the Blue Mountains. Not for the first time, Dís was unspeakably grateful that she had been able to come and see this through to the end with her family.  
  
It would never have done to remain behind, she was sure of that.

“Good book, is it?” she asked, gesturing toward the volume on the floor between them. Bilbo spoke so comparatively little compared to the rest of them, she felt she hardly knew anything about him at all which was a dratted shame considering how long they’d all been together. Everyone else on this quest she’d known for at least ninety years, she knew their personalities and histories nearly as well as she knew her own, but the hobbit was still something of an enigma and if there was anything that was guaranteed to make Dís uncomfortable, it was ambiguity of any sort.  
  
“It’s a book of proverbs and prophecies - riddles, many of them, I adore riddles,” he explained, turning the parchment so that Dís could see it. The dwarrowdam tilted her head to the side and squinted at the text. The book was written in Elvish runes, which, though similar to the script of her own people, were not so alike that she could read the parchment with any accuracy. She thought she saw something about a sword, but could not be certain. Bilbo seemed to recognize the problem and took up the parchment he was writing on when she arrived, laying it over the older pages. “I’ve rendered it in the common tongue as well.”  
  
This time Dís did not bother trying to read the parchment, for the language of Men and Hobbits was even more elusive to her than Elvish. “I don’t read the common tongue,” she shrugged with a half-smile.  
  
The hobbit started in disbelief, worried he’d accidentally offended her again. “Oh,” he said, spinning the quill idly in his hands. “I just assumed - your being a princess and all, I thought - I’m sorry if I...if my...”  
  
“I ought to,” she informed him, interrupting his apology. “Thorin does, Balin does - if I’d had the education that was intended for me, I would as well, but as it was...not a lot of time for lessons when I was a dwarfling, so I only learned the essentials.” There was no shame in it, Balin did what he could for her, so did her parents and her brothers. It was lucky there were quills and ink enough that she knew how to read and write their own language. This was no shameful secret of hers, she knew her Khuzdul, her runes and her craft. Anything else was superfluous to those three fundamental skills all Dwarves should possess. Nodding her head in an encouraging way, Dís took up a section of hair to braid and requested, “Read it to me, if you please.”  
  
“Of course,” Bilbo nodded. He took a breath, then let it out, looking up at her slightly anxiously. “Erm, well, it’s only a _rough_ translation, it’s a poem, poetry is hard to render from one language to another without losing the cadence, so if it sounds a bit odd - ”  
  
“I wouldn’t know the difference,” she smiled at him and swept a section of hair over her back to get it out of the way; her hair was so long it nearly touched the floor while she was sitting. “Give it a go, I promise not to laugh at you if it’s rubbish.”  
  
Bilbo chuckled and took up his parchment again, reciting,  
  
“All that glisters is not gold.  
The one who wanders is not lost.  
Strong and ancient will not fall away.  
The tree whose roots are deep will withstand the cold.  
  
Ashes cover a smouldering fire.  
Within the darkness, there is light.  
The splintered sword will be new-forged.  
The bare head will be crowned once more.”  
  
Dís’s restless fingers stopped their movement and her face became very still as she listened to the words, her stomach giving an uncomfortable flutter, for wandering, fire and uncrowned kings all hit too close to home for her to be entirely comfortable. “Interesting,” she said at last. “When was that written, do you know?”  
  
Bilbo laughed and ran a hand through his hair, “Alas no. Elves are actually quite bad at including dates, I find, at least within books intended for their own kind. Probably because many of them remember exactly when their books were written and have no need of them. All very well for their people, but frustrating for a simple little hobbit.”

Dís relaxed slightly. For all she knew, it might have been written thousands of years ago about events that had already come to pass. _The bare head will be crowned once more..._ no. It was a bit of Elvish posy and had no meaning for her people, she decided quite firmly.  
  
“I’ll leave you in peace,” she said, rising to her feet, shaking her head when Bilbo protested that he did not mind the company. “Nah, you’ll work quicker if I’m not breathing down your neck. Just came in to let you know that Bombur’s got some sausages to cook up later, if you’re still hungry - I know I am.”  
  
Smiling sheepishly, Bilbo nodded and said almost wistfully, “I could eat supper.” It had been so long since the hobbit had eaten his usual two evening meals that Dís could have told him the Dwarves were frying up grub worms and he would happily lay aside these ancient texts and scurry along to join her.  
  
Bidding Mr. Baggins a temporary farewell Dís retraced her steps back down to the veranda where her friends and family were assembled, smiling in private triumph to find most of them in their underthings. Their clothes were, presumably, still drying since there wasn’t enough daylight to do the job quickly as she’d ensured with her early bath.  
  
“Very handsome,” she said approvingly as Fíli and Kíli approached her, faces scrubbed clean of dirt, their hair still plastered to their backs and faces. Fíli’s mop was especially unruly and Dís produced a comb from one of her pockets, ordering him to sit while she brushed it out. In a little row they settled down on the stone floor, Fíli in front of her while Kíli sat before his brother and Fíli brushed his hair out. Most of the Company had separated into little groups, combing and braiding one another’s hair in the firelight created from broken Elvish furniture.  
  
The Broadbeam brothers were each working on Bifur’s hair, Bombur with a pair of scissors, probably taken from Ori’s sewing kit, to trim back the hair that grew around the axe blade. Speaking of Ori, he had his tongue stuck between his teeth as he attempted to recreate Nori’s elaborate hairstyle while Dori sat with his hand over his mouth, trying not to laugh too hard at both of them. It was not long before Dís felt a heavy, solid warmth settle behind her and there were broad, short fingers carding through her own hair.  
  
“Did you find the halfling?” Thorin asked, his voice a comforting, familiar rumble.  
  
“Mm-hmm,” his sister murmured, reaching into a pocket in her tunic and handing her hair beads over to him without looking. “He read me some Elvish poetry and I told him we’d be eating soon, I expect he’ll be down in a bit.”

Dís did not turn around, but she imagined her brother was probably making a very amusing face following her description of what she’d been up to. Thorin stopped his work, but resumed it again after only a pause, snorting and commenting, “Elvish poetry? Dare I ask?”  
  
“Apparently our burglar’s a bit of a scribe, he reads Elvish and was rendering it in the common tongue,” she explained.  
  
“Was it any good? The poem?” Fíli asked, twisting his head around and earning himself a bop on the head with the comb. “What was it about?”  
  
“Be still,” his mother told him. “Eh, it was about the usual things: gold, swords. Not much about war, but it was fairly short.”  
  
Kíli sniggered and asked, “Nothing about trees?”  
    
“Oh, no, rest assured, there was talk of trees,” she rolled her eyes. “Beads, laddie m'love,” she held out her hand expectantly for Fíli’s hair clasps. They continued in silence for a moment until Bofur started singing quietly to himself.  
  
“Whatever made you think of that?” Dís asked, recognizing the tune immediately. The miner shrugged, his cousin smacking him on the back of his own head with a brush as he quickly fixed Bofur's hair in the three simple braids he preferred. His hat was on the ground beside her and he looked awfully young without it.  
  
“All this talk of poetry, puts me in a romantical mindset,” he replied airily.  
  
Dís regarded her friend with an uncomprehending tilt of her head, until Thorin tugged her hair to get her to keep her head still and then Dwalin was beside her, holding out the pipe he'd fetched from her abandoned coat. “Smoke?” he asked.  
  
Nodding, Dís popped the bit in her mouth and let Dwalin light it for her since her hands were still occupied. Bofur resumed singing, loudly enough now for everyone to hear.  
  
“Me young love said to me,  
'Me mother won't mind.  
And me father won't slight you  
For your lack of kine.'  
  
She stepped away from me,  
And this she did say,  
'It will not be long, love.  
Til our wedding day.'”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo hasn't had the time to pretty up the Riddle of Strider, so I've bent canon slightly and rendered it here less sexily than it appears in LotR. The song Bofur sings is "She Moved Through the Fair," (traditional Irish, of course) because he is a TROUBLEMAKER. Also, is there anything cuter than dwarves braiding each others' hair? I really don't think so.


	17. Chapter 17

The Company was roused early the next morning, when the first beams of the sun’s light shone on their tired faces. The veranda they’d all but claimed, laying out their bedrolls and snoozing next to one another as deeply as they did on the road, seemed to invite the daylight into every nook and cranny. Shining a light on a sleeping dwarf’s face was the surest way to rouse them, often more effective than the clanging of pots and pans by their heads.

Bofur alone slept through it, his hat pulled down over his eyes and each member of the Company tried to copy his example. Fíli and Kíli curled themselves into tight balls and pulled their coats over their heads to block the light. Bombur lay his braided beard over his eyes, Thorin rolled over, burying his face in his arm. Nori somehow got hold of Ori’s scarf and wrapped it around his head while Ori snuggled closer to his elder brother and hid his face beneath Dori’s arm. Dís had her travelling cloak bunched under her head to serve as a pillow, but she gladly lay her head underneath it, muffling the light and sound with its heavy folds.

But she was awake and her senses just sharp enough to feel the nearby shift of blankets and the soft padding of feet on stone; they felt _just_ comfortable enough among the Elves to remove their boots as they slept. Only Bilbo availed himself of an actual room.

“What’re y’doin’?” Dwalin’s unmistakable voice rumbled sleepily from nearby. Rolling onto her back, Dís turned her head to the side and glanced out of a gap between the folds of her cloak. Balin was up and about, squinting into the sunlight rather than trying to grab a few extra blessed minutes of rest. Odd of him; he was usually so sensible.

“Breath of air,” Balin replied softly. “Go back to sleep.”  Dwalin rolled over, back to the sun and seemed about to do just that, but then his brother sighed and something about the tone must have niggled at his mind for he turned back around, squinting in the faint sunshine at him.

“Well, now I'm up,” Dwalin muttered grumpily, throwing off his cloak and getting to his feet. Dís shut her eyes and tried to will herself into unconsciousness so she would not be eavesdropping, but even when she shifted more completely under the cloak, their voices carried over the snores and heavy breathing of her fellows. “Got something on your mind?”

Once again, Balin sighed. “That map. I don’t like the idea of showing it to the Elves.”

Dwalin snorted, “Who does? Not Thorin, that’s for damned certain.” The larger dwarf glanced down at his dearest friend and king; no danger of being overheard by him, so long as ‘orcs’ weren’t mentioned, Thorin could sleep through a landslide.

Balin gave his brother a significant look. “Gandalf is most insistent.”

“I’d like to see him try to take it,” Dwalin declared, chuckling under his breath. “This quest’s been sore lacking in entertainment.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Is it not?” the sound of Dwalin’s bulk settling on something made Dís wince. After Bombur _and_ her brother managed to destroy two pieces of furniture, she did not like to imagine what would happen if Dwalin got it in his head to sit on a railing. His swearing when the masonry crumbled and he fell off would definitely rouse the others, if nothing else.

“Get down from there, you little idiot,” his elder brother scolded. “It’s not funny and it’s not right. We should not appeal to outsiders to read our own words. They were never _meant_ to be seen by such as these - ”

“Ah! Dwalin, Balin!” Gandalf’s impossibly cheerful, impossibly _loud_ voice boomed from a balcony above their heads prompting a chorus of groaning from the recently sleeping dwarves. “Awake already? Excellent!”

Rolling over and shoving her head in her arms, Dís muttered something very like, “I _hate_ that wizard,” only she added an adjective (possibly a verb, depending on the context) before the word ‘wizard’ that was far too rude for the ears of the Elves surrounding them. Even so, her brother, sleeping nearby, did not have the heart to chastise her as he got to his feet, squinting in the daylight and looking dour, as though he’d spent the night sleeping on sharp spikes rather than a perfectly serviceable spot of floor.

“Breakfast?” Bombur asked blearily.

Nori groaned and shook his head, “Probably more greens. How much you want to bet they don’t even serve eggs for fear of insulting the birds?”

Dwalin crouched by Dís and threw her cloak off in one swift movement. “Dropping eaves?” he asked quietly.

“You breathe so loud you could wake the dead, never mind talking,” she said defensively, sitting up and smoothing her hair away from her face.

Her friend smiled at her and jerked his head to the side. “Take a walk with me,” he said, pausing to allow her time to put her coat on, strap her axe to her back and her sword round her waist. Suitably attired and armed, she got up, giving her sons one good kick in the sides each to get them up. Rubbing sleep out of her eyes, she trailed after Dwalin, wondering if he knew where he was going. He seemed to have no particular destination in mind, but from the way his eyes darted about Dís surmised that he wanted to go somewhere private.

A queer thing fluttered in her chest and for a second she forgot her years and felt like a gawky dwarfling on the cusp of adolescence, sneaking off with a lad she admired. Why did he wish to speak with her privately? Did he want to talk about what he’d done last night, what he’d seen? Did he wish to apologize or was he going to stand there, brazen as could be, and tell her his feelings on the matter?

When Dwalin stopped and folded his arms, the fluttering vanished as quickly as it had come; Dís recognized that look in his eye; it was all business. Dwalin was ever a stalwart warrior and defender of the King before anything else. Biting down her disappointment, she looked at him steadily as he said, ‘You and Thorin talked about that map, didn’t you, lass?”

“Aye,” she nodded. “Briefly.”

“Come to a decision?”

Dís shook her head, “It’s his to make. I only offered a bit of advice.”

Dwalin looked at her expectantly. Heaving a sigh very much like one of his brother’s, Dís rubbed the back of her neck beneath her hair and shrugged slightly helplessly. “This is how I see it," she said. "We know there’s another door - we don’t know where it is. We’ve got a key, but that’s useless and I don’t know if you got a good look at the thing, but as-is, the map tells us nothing that we don’t already know. I agree with Balin, I do, it’s a damned shame none of us has the skill to read it, but if their Lord can and _will_ do so - which I’ve got my misgivings about, I’ll not lie - we’ve got to let him see it, haven’t we?”

Nodding, Dwalin said, “Aye. I thought so too, but Balin’s...not keen.”

“None of us are - “ she began, but her cousin shook his head.

“It’s more than that,” he replied, his voice deeply sad for reasons that were a mystery to Dís until he spoke again. “Reckon I know why that is. You remember our mother, lass?”

“A bit,” Dís paused, trying to remember. Most of what she knew of the woman she gathered from stories. She knew their mother’s name was Halldóra, that she was the premiere scribe of the court, it was said what she held her in her head could fill Erebor’s libraries ten times over. If she cast her mind back far enough, she could recall a very short-statured dwarf woman, surely not any taller than their burglar, with dark hair and a high, sweet laugh. “Not much,” she admitted. Then, struck by a thought that could not possibly be accurate, asked, “She didn’t have feathers in her hair, did she?”

To her surprise, Dwalin actually laughed. “Quills, aye,” he nodded. When other dwarrowdams wove metals into their hair, wore golden circlets or bejeweled clasps, Halldóra’s tresses were pierced throughout with quill pens that she might jot down information at a moment’s notice. His mother was brilliant, the cogs of her mind whirling at full speed all the time. She seemed almost perpetually distracted, constantly in the middle of ten different projects, always five minutes late for everything. It was a common sight to see her running through the halls of Erebor, tripping over long scrolls in her arms, leaving a trail of quills and ink splatters in her wake.

Tiny, too. By the time Dwalin was fifty he towered over her and had to lift her off her feet so she could kiss him. Used to amuse his father to no end. Fundin was devoted to his wife and was never the same after she died. Halldóra was one of the victims of the Worm, trapped deep within the mountain, either burned by dragon-fire or crushed beneath falling rocks, no one knew and her younger son, who’d seen heads burst open on the battlefield, limbs twisted and blood pour like water over the ground, could not bring himself to contemplate her fate.

“She could’ve read that map in a heartbeat, I’d bet my life on it,” he said with utter assurity. “She knew...everything. Spoke more languages than the King himself and all the advisors at court put together and wrote ‘em too. Wasn’t a _thing_ she didn’t know, folks asked her for a poem or a story written out and she’d ask if they’d rather she copied it in the script of Erebor or Moria. Wasn’t any trouble for her either way, could’ve done it in _Elvish_ without thinking twice about it.”

Though she did not know Halldóra well, Dís felt the pang of her loss sharply in that moment. For every dwarf who escaped, there were dozens more who perished in the mountain. Her great-grandmother, their Queen Sigdís, for whom she was named. Her mother’s mother Herdís and cousin Frigga who Ama always said, with far-away eyes and a regretful countenance, was like a sister to her. So many loved ones lost; and their family had been one of the lucky ones.

“If your Ma was here, we wouldn’t need anyone to read that map,” Dís pointed out sadly. If his mother was alive, so too would be her father and grandfather. They would be safe and content beneath the mountain and the Elves who came to their halls would bow respectfully before the throne and not give them thinly-veiled hints that they wanted to scrub them like tired race-horses before they’d think them presentable.

Dwalin lowered his arms to his side and nodded. “Aye. That’s true enough. So, the weed-eater’ll tell us how to find the door to our own home. Can’t imagine what they’d say.” ‘They’ being all their forefathers who came before them, carved the stone and ruled the land with hearts of flint and spirits of fire.

“Well, hopefully you won’t find out for a good many years yet,” Dís reminded him. “I’m hoping it’s a long while before you’re called to the Halls of Waiting. And when you get there, they’ll be so full of praise for you taking the Mountain back that they won’t spare a thought for the details of how we went about it.” Flashing him a quick grin she added, “Anyway, the minstrels’ll clean it all up in song.”

“Aye,” Dwalin chuckled. “That they will. Always do.”

Side by side they walked back to their fellows in silence. Thorin eyed them closely when they returned, finding the other dwarves up and about - praise the Maker, the Elves _did_ serve eggs - but looked away, not seeing whatever he was looking for in their faces. Dís was about to sit by Bofur and tuck in when her brother took hold of her arm and smiled at her in a self-satisfied way that she did not like at all.

“No, you don’t,” he said, steering her toward the high table with Gandalf, Lord Elrond - and Bilbo Baggins, oddly. “You’ll not abandon me for better company again, excellent sister.”

“I’d better be excellent to break bread with that dragon-tongued wizard,” she hissed, but shut her mouth and arranged her features into an expression she hoped was bland and placid enough that neither Gandalf nor Elrond would find anything peculiar about it.

“Your weapons are all dwarf-make, I see,” Elrond observed; evidently, he realized that the safest topic of conversation among dwarrows was talk of weaponry. It was definitely one of the most fruitful, dwarves talked casually of their axes the way others talked about the weather.

“Aye,” Dís nodded, leaning her axe against the table. _A blind man could tell you that,_ she thought, but did not say.

“Purchased for you?”

“The axe is my own work,” she said, a note of pride in her voice. Created by her own hands for her sword dance in her seventy-fifth year. At the time, she never dreamed it would be used to cripple wargs and annoy trolls, but she was very young at the time. At that age she was only thinking far enough ahead to her next ale or flirting with the miners down the way.

“And the sword?” the Elf asked. Clearly he hoped she would be more talkative than her brother and Dís indulged him, to a point.

“My brother’s,” she replied evenly. Beside her, Thorin went very still and even Gandalf’s eyes dimmed slightly. Lord Elrond evidently thought she spoke of Thorin, he made some comment about being generous that went unremarked on by both siblings. The wizard asked Bilbo a question about the books he’d been reading and thus diverted their chatter in such a way that the dwarves were not obligated to contribute overmuch.

The sword she wielded was most emphatically _not_ Thorin’s. It was brought back to the healers’ tents by him from the battlefield outside the gates of Moria along with the grief they both carried in their hearts. It was Frerin’s sword, christened with the black blood of Orcs, washed clean and maintained by her for years afterward. Having been denied his last rites, it was the only piece of her brother, apart from the memorial braid on her right arm, that she carried with her.  

It was strange, that in a place this foreign to them, so unlike the homes and dwellings they had known, that so many of the Company would feel the strong pull of memory and face constant reminders of those they’d lost in halls and fields miles and miles hence.

* * *

 

When Lord Elrond discovered that the hidden writing on the map was rendered in moon runes, Balin’s heart felt as heavy as if it were encased in stone. Moon-runes could be rendered and read only by scribes with the greatest skill in the profession. _Someday I’ll teach you, dearie,_ he remembered his mother promising him as clearly as if it were yesterday. _When you lay down arms and find the time to learn._

Nearly two centuries later and he was still fighting.

Balin was almost reluctant to accompany Thorin to the meeting place where the map would be read. He might have excused himself altogether if the lad hadn’t requested his counsel specifically. How could he refuse? It was his duty and more than that, Thorin was like a second brother to him; if he asked for something, Balin rarely had the heart to refuse.

As the sun set on their second day in Rivendell, Thorin left him to fetch his sister; this was her legacy as surely as it was his and he wanted her at his side when the moon rose. Balin prepared to set out, but paused on the threshold, lost in thought.

The old warrior did not realize his brother had spoken to him until one of Dwalin’s broad hands found its way onto his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, trying for a smile and failing.

“You’ll be deaf as Óin soon,” Dwalin remarked with exaggerated  exasperation, trying for some levity. “I said, d’you want me to come along?”

Without thinking, nerves frayed the thinnest they’d been since Azanulbizar, Balin said the single cruellest thing he’d ever spoken to his brother in his life, “I can’t see why you’d want to come. If _I_ can’t read that map, you’ll be no help whatsoever.”

He regretted his words even before Dwalin’s hand dropped from his shoulder. A darkness twisted in Balin’s chest and his whole body felt cold, though there was no chill in the air. Looking up into his brother’s eyes he briefly glimpsed naked hurt before Dwalin locked the emotion away behind a stiff upper lip and remote expression. It was like watching a candle that was abruptly snuffed darken behind his eyes.

They joked, sometimes, about the fact that where scholarship was concerned, they were opposites. Dwalin cared more for action than words, it was obvious to all who knew him and Balin was as bookish by inclination as little Ori. Most never knew the truth. The fact was, Dwalin loved a good tale and his mind was full of stories of their history, which he could recall accurately, never needing to remind himself of a name or date.

It was fortunate that he rarely misremembered because if Dwalin needed to return to a source, it would be nearly impossible for him to do so. The sad, secret fact of the matter was that Dwalin could scarcely read. Not the runes of their people nor the letters of Men. He’d been taught as rigorously as Thorin and other children of Durin’s line. More, probably, since their mother would sit by him nightly, going over the symbols with him until her voice was hoarse and her son exhausted. No one knew why Dwalin had such difficulties, he was perfectly average in most aspects and extraordinary in others. He tried, _how_ he tried, but even now he read painfully slowly, only grasping every third word and his penmanship was as shaky and blocky as a child’s, his writing even worse.

 _Sharp enough for both of us,_ Balin would wink at his brother. It was a jest, but beneath it was a reassurance; he would never let his brother flounder in a sea of incomprehension. Where he could ease his way, he would. And because of his own frustration, he’d thrown his brother’s greatest shame back in his face. What right did he have? In this instance, he was as word-blind as his brother.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words feeling inadequate on his tongue. “I didn’t - ”

“Don’t say you didn’t mean it,” Dwalin said sharply, turning away. “We both know you did. And you’re right. I’m worse than useless.” Squinting at the moon rising steadily over the hills - where were the _walls_ in this place? - he reminded his brother, “You’ll want to be on your way.”

And Balin, to whom words normally came so easily, found himself utterly at a loss as he turned and beat a slow, plodding retreat toward the appointed meeting place. Thorin and Dís were waiting for him, wearing identical expressions of resignation. Without a word to one another, they followed Gandalf and the Elf to the moonlight drenched platform, wishing with all their hearts that there was another way and knowing that all their prayers were in vain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how everything was going really well in the last chapter? Yeah... I have been on a serious Dwalin whump kick, I hope you all enjoyed our Fundinson family detour, as sad as it was. I spent time today really fleshing out Halldóra (she appears in "Word Blindness" and "A Good Man Goes to War") and was DESPERATE to write something about her (in brief- she was a totally endearing geek and she and Fundin were the cutest couple in Erebor). Speaking of "Word Blindness," it's a fill for the kink meme, the prompter wanted a dyslexic Dwalin and it has become my headcanon.


	18. Chapter 18

The King Under the Mountain found his sister sitting for one of little Ori’s sketches. He was determined to make a pen and ink rendering of everyone on the journey - even their burglar who thus far managed to demur any invitations to have his likeness rendered. Thorin thought it was just as well; the hobbit was not of their ilk. If this quest was successful and their deeds passed into legend, no halfling could expect to have his timid exploits mentioned alongside the deeds of warriors and royalty.

Gandalf thought the little creature had value and though he proved himself clever enough when facing down the trolls, his clumsiness also got them into that losing battle in the first place. As a dwarf, Thorin ever valued might over mind and their burglar displayed precious little of the former thus far.

“Should I smile or should I look very serious?” Dís asked the boy, folding her hands in her lap and attempting a look of furrowed-brow gravity. It lasted all of five seconds before it descended into crinkled eyes and smiles.

Ori looked up and grinned back at her. “Whichever you like, I’ll do a few renderings and you can tell me which is your favorite.”

“Can I?” Dís asked, sounding rather delighted by the prospect. “That’s very generous of you, m’dear - ah, sorry, I’ll leave off talking.”

The young dwarf smiled bashfully and ducked his head. “Well, it would never do to make a portrait of you that you don’t like. And don’t worry about talking, I don’t mind,” he shrugged, taking up his charcoal and sketching with his tongue between his teeth.

“I’m sure I’ll like it, whatever you do,” she assured him, then added, “I’ve never had a portrait taken before.” Dís spoke casually and without bitterness. It was a marked difference between herself and her brother. When Thorin was forced to think on all those things that ought to have been, more often than not his mood soured and his tongue sharpened, making his words like daggers until he himself grew so poisoned by his own foul thoughts that he lapsed into gloomy silence. His sister merely shrugged, tossed her head with deliberate ease and locked eyes on the person who reminded her of her rightful station frankly, but with a hint of defiance, as if to say, _And? What of it?_

“I’m afraid I have need of your subject, lad,” Thorin said, peering over Ori’s shoulder at what he’d done. He got the vague impression of the roundness of a head and shoulders before one of the artist’s hands covered the whole thing.

Ori seemed slightly surprised at himself, being so bold as to hide his sketch from the elder dwarf - his _king_ Dori reminded him multiple times before they set out, not only Fíli and Kíli’s slightly terrifying uncle - but it was not finished yet. A dwarf’s pride in his craft could overwhelm even the rules of courtesy. Thorin did not seem annoyed at his actions merely amused. His mouth twitched into a half-smile as Ori nodded nervously and said of course if Missus Dís was needed elsewhere, he could find someone else to draw.

Dís’s eyes were questioning as she looked at her brother, but she smiled warmly at Ori, patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll find you if our business doesn’t go on too long,” she told him in a sweet, motherly manner. Ori gathered up his sketchbook and pocketed his charcoal, bobbing awkwardly at them before scurrying away. “Dori probably got him bowing - I know he never would have picked that up from Nori,” she commented to Thorin in a manner that indicated she did not care for being bowed to by the boy she’d known all his life and was kin besides.

“Nori would stand straight-backed before Durin himself,” Thorin replied, with only a small amount of disapproval. If he did not know their mother to personally vouch that she had carried and delivered all of them, he would never have believed they came from the same clan, never mind the same immediate family.

Dori - steadfast, fussy, hard-working Dori - and Thorin were of an age. In a day they’d gone from lives of privilege in their mountain kingdom to sleeping in the open air and desperately seeking work. Nori was younger than Dís and grew up almost entirely in the wild. He was well acquainted with hardship and unfamiliar with boundaries. Raised to dream of gold, yet he rarely saw it during his waking hours - was it any wonder he turned to a life of theft? Ori, like his nephews, were settled children of the exile. Rarely did they want for necessaries, they grew up well-loved and very nearly coddled for they were the only hope for the future of their people in a foreign land. Little Ori, their self-assigned scribe and budding artist whose skill with a quill was ranked well above his handling of a warhammer. As individuals, the three were really nothing remarkable.Taken together, as known brothers, and they were incomprehensible.

“You’ve given the Elf leave to look at our map, haven’t you?”

Of course, not all dwarrow-kind was composed of siblings who were all opposites in temper and temperament; some were so close it was like they shared two halves of one soul and were privy to each other’s thoughts. Didn’t make the sensation of having his mind read any less strange. “How’d you guess?” Thorin asked, giving his sister a somewhat startled look.

“You look like you’ve been sucking on lemons,” Dís informed him. “You’ll want to look more kindly when little Ori takes up his pen for _your_ portrait.” She reached out and patted his back in much the manner she’d just done with Ori, strong and reassuring. “For what it’s worth, I think that was wise.”

The sour lemon look returned and Thorin frowned deeply at his sister. “I wish there was another way.”

“So do I,” she said, sincerely. But they both knew there could not be. Most of the learned dwarves and dwarrowdams of Erebor perished in the mountain or on the road. The scribes of the Blue Mountains and the Iron Hills were even now ensconced in their council chambers and libraries, scratching away with their quills or returning books to their shelves. Not a warrior or bookkeeper from the other kingdoms had joined them, they were all alone in this.

Thorin and Dís met Gandalf and Elrond, wearing identical expressions of resignation and exchanged only a few words among themselves. Balin joined them minutes later, but he was uncharacteristically silent. He looked so weighted down and sorrowful that the siblings were of a mind to ask if something terrible occurred without their knowing of it. Balin seemed determined not to lock eyes with either of them. Without a word to one another, they followed Gandalf and the Elf to the moonlight drenched platform, wishing with all their hearts that there was another way and knowing that all their prayers were in vain.

Map in hand, Lord Elrond broke the silence, commenting, “These runes were written on a midsummer’s eve by the light of a crescent moon nearly two-hundred years ago. It would seem you were meant to come to Rivendell; Fate is with you, Thorin Oakenshield. The same moon shines upon us tonight.”

Life had given Thorin a cynical disposition, but he had enough composure to stop himself from giving in to bitter laughter at the Elf’s words. Fate had ever been a particular enemy of his. He survived the mountain only to see his family fall one by one to insanity, butchery and sickness. The portents indicated that the time was ripe to retake the mountain, yet he had no allies save his closest kin and kith. And, the greatest insult of all, a member of the race of their enemies was the only soul who could read words written in the sacred language of their people that was seldom exposed to outsiders. If Fate was with him tonight, it was a rare meeting and he wondered how long it would take before She fled from him again.

Lord Elrond lay the parchment down atop an opaque white stone, situated so that the white moonbeams could shine directly upon the dull surface. Balin remembered the moonstones better than the royal siblings and he’d never seen anyone read from them. In a chamber without a roof, high on the mountaintop, there were six such stones in a circle. By daylight they seemed nothing very special, but when the moon shone upon them, they glowed and in that light illuminated the silvery script in which dwarrows penned their greatest secrets.

It was nothing short of blasphemy, to hear the words of their people from the lips of an Elf. The King and Lady bristled slightly, while the Warrior mourned.

“Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks and the setting sun, with the last light of Durin’s Day, will shine upon the keyhole.”

Balin looked at the runes upon the paper, shimmering and glistening in the candlelight. They blurred and shifted in his sight, but that was his body’s fault rather than any error in their rendering. The runes were perfect and tears sprang to his eyes when he saw the strong, clear lines glittering upon the parchment; the hand was his mother’s.

Lord Elrond took the map up in his hands and thus removed it from the dwarves’ line of sight. “That sounds like a prophecy,” Dís remarked, confused. Why on earth would they write a visionary riddle upon a map? The grey stone where the thrush knocks...she shook her head to clear it of cobwebs, frustrated that their forebears had not written the instructions more plainly.

“Summer is passing, Durin’s Day will soon be upon us,” Thorin said to Balin, turning to the older dwarf for the guidance he so often provided. 

“We still have time,” Balin said firmly.

“Time for what?” Dís asked, totally forgetting the fact that she was not alone among her kinsmen, that there was a wizard and an Elf paying close attention to their words. She thought the map would yield more useful aid than that, something more explicit, more useful. She was not stupid, but she was practical and preferred straightforward speech to anything else.

“To find the entrance,” he clarified, looking up into Dís’s eyes with a burning fire in his own gaze. With his generally placid demeanor, it was easy to forget that Balin was a great warrior of the finest order, the determination in his expression now was a forceful reminder. In the moonlight, the few scars on his face stood out in stark relief. They were not half as many as the craters and ridges that criss-crossed Dwalin’s countenance, but that did not mean Balin was a less enthusiastic fighter, only that he was more careful. “We have to be standing in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time. Then - and _only_ then - can the door be opened.”

“So this is your purpose?” Elrond interrupted. “To enter the mountain.”

There was no censure in his tone, nor challenge, but Thorin turned to him with a look that made it clear he would brook neither. “What of it?” he growled.

The Elf inclined his head down toward Thorin and gave him a meaningful look, though the dwarf king did not understand its import, “There are some who would not deem it wise.”

“The fabled _wisdom_ of the Elves,” Dís muttered, frowning up at the Elven lord over her brother’s shoulder. It was all very well for him, his armor was new, his horses well fed and his kingdom secure. Let him lead his people into battle against a dreaded foe in patched and borrowed armor, let him see the young ones waste away from starving and let him toil at the crafts that were the legacy of their people only to have his work undervalued. Once he had done that, then he could speak to her of wisdom.

“It is not for myself alone that I speak, my Lady,” the Elf said, unflinchingly calm and unfailingly polite as he handed the map back to her brother. Thorin snatched it quickly from the lily-white hand; he would not let it go so easily again.

“What do you mean?” Gandalf asked.

Lord Elrond turned to the wizard with an enigmatic expression. “You are not the only guardian to stand watch over Middle-earth,” he said mysteriously before he strode away from them all, disappearing into the darkness beyond the platform on which they stood.

Before the wizard could follow, Thorin boldly took hold of his arm and forced him to remain behind. “Is it not as I said?” he demanded. “I told you the Elves would never look favorably upon our quest. A curse upon your beard! It would have been better if we’d never come.”

“You know a great deal more now than you did when we arrived,” Gandalf replied, looking distinctly ruffled. “The location of the door, for instance. And when you will be able to enter the mountain - you cannot deny that you have profited from this little rest.”

“Little rest,” Dís snorted. “It won’t be a ‘little rest’ when your Elf friend orders us turn back and we refuse.” There was no question on that front; they passed their chance to turn back when the wizard handed them that map and key. The very map and key that caused them to reveal their intentions to those who seemed determined to deny aid to the dwarves when they were most in need of it. Food and lodgings were all very well, but they did not come to Rivendell to take a holiday. “Will your conscience be heavy, wizard, when we _cut_ our way out?”

Gandalf held up his hands in a gesture of supplication. “Now, now, I hardly think it will come to that,” he said uneasily. “I must speak to Lord Elrond. But...I fear I may be detained for some time.”

“Detained?” Balin repeated, folding his arms and eyeing the wizard with open suspicion.

“Yes,” Gandalf nodded. The dwarves looked at one another, perplexed, but the meaning of the wizard’s words became clearer as he continued. “But don’t delay on my account, though the mountains are treacherous in this season of the year. Wait for me before you attempt to cross them.”

The wizard departed from them to speak privately with Lord Elrond and the dwarves went in the opposite direction to round up their companions and beat a hasty retreat out of the valley.

“They discuss our affairs, but do so out of our hearing,” Thorin seethed, going down the hall at such a quick clip that the others struggled to keep pace with him. “As though we are _children_.”

“In their eyes, we are,” Balin reminded him reasonably. “These are not Men who scoff at us, they are Elves and Wizards who have been on this earth since the days of Tumunzahar and Khazad-dûm and Durin the Deathless.”

“I know that,” Thorin snapped, uncharacteristic of his exchanges with Balin, but the exchange with the Elf left him feeling furious. “And since those days, the Elves have been cheating us. Remember the Nauglafring and their treachery.”

“I remember,” Balin said, taking hold of Thorin’s arm at last and forcing him to halt. “ _You_ remember how many of our race were slaughtered by the Elvish armies. The Dwarves of Tumunzahar had no help from their kinsmen and were as alone in their fight as we are. I share your anger, laddie, but you _cannot_ be so hot-headed.”

“We are leaving,” Dís reassured him, taking care to keep her voice down. “Gandalf is in council with Lord Elrond, he cannot have alerted his people to our plans, he hasn’t had time. They will not stop us, Thorin, they _won’t_.”

Standing between these two pillars of rationality, Thorin felt some of the rage of humiliation and disappointment wash away. He took a deep breath and nodded once. Moving at a more sedate, but still urgent pace, they found most of their Company together, either smoking or already asleep within their bedrolls. Rather than shout an order, Thorin, Balin and Dís knelt by and whispered their intentions in their comrades’ ears.

“Wake up, my loves,” Dís muttered low to Fíli and Kíli, sleeping side by side. “We’re leaving.”

“Breakfast, Mam?” Kíli muttered into his arm, more asleep than awake. Very possibly he thought they were still in their little house in the Ered Luin.

Dís stroked his hair and shook her head, “Not yet, but come on, get up. We need to move quickly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who saw the livestream? Did you cry? Did you pee a little? I can't even lie, when Thorin said, "We are the Dwarves of Erebor. And we have come to reclaim our homeland," I literally got CHILLS. 
> 
> Also, yeah, I know Bilbo was in the moon runes scene in the movie (and I'm breaking my rule about not giving Dís other characters' lines), but I left him out here because there's really no reason for him to be there except to give Gandalf the excuse to explain what Durin's Day is to the audience. Thorin doesn't much like him yet and he's already unhappy about letting the Elf read his map, I'm pretty sure he'd draw the line at having the hobbit come along for a listen. You won't get the chance to miss him too much, he'll be back in the next chapter.


	19. Chapter 19

The halls of Rivendell were dark and silent as they gathered their gear and marched on. It was with a small measure of pleased surprise that Dís saw their Mister Baggins, eyes puffy with unachieved sleep, take up his walking stick to join them. They had a contract and woe to any who broke his word with a company of dwarves, but a part of her expected that he would call upon the Elves as protectors and insist on remaining behind.

It was not that she thought him particularly cowardly, her mind was not Thorin’s and she was growing steadily more fond of the little chap. A coward would not have risked his neck rescuing their ponies, nor would a coward have agreed to sign on as their burglar. There were good dwarves, brave souls all in the Iron Hills and Blue Mountains who would not test their mettle against a dragon. Bilbo Baggins did not lack heart, but he did seem happier in Rivendell among the books and quills than he had around their campfires and on the back of their ponies.

Oddly, the lack of mounts seemed to buck up Bilbo’s spirits. Far from complaining of the motion and the hair and the smell of them, he actually whistled as they walked along the grasslands beyond Rivendell, though Thorin sharply told him to cease, lest Elvish guards hear him and seek to drag them back.

“I’d say there’s more to alert them in the clomping of dwarvish boots than a walking song,” the hobbit muttered. Bofur reached out and clapped him on the back, taking care not to knock him off his furry feet with the force of it.

“Don’t mind him,” he winked. “Thorin’s just tetchy for lack of good viands.”

“That a fact?” Glóin asked, pitching his voice _just_ low enough that Thorin was able to maintain his dignity and pretend he couldn’t hear him. “How do you account for him the rest of the time?”

They were tired enough to be a little slaphappy and gently teasing their King was just the thing needed to buck up flagging spirits. Dwalin threw a glare at them over his shoulder - someone ought to pay lip service to due deference, he was as good as the next dwarf - but no harm was meant. Most of them were kin after all, or friends-like-kin. There was a word for it in Khuzdul, for brothers and sisters in bond, by this point it was more than applicable to the dwarves in their Company and what was a little friendly ribbing among family?

Thorin did not rebuke them for it; good cheer was a decent remedy for weary bodies and empty bellies, he learned that decades ago. Besides, he’d be no kind of dwarf if he couldn’t take a bit of teasing.

They were fortunate enough to find some waterfowl to kill along the way. It was a few hours before midday and Thorin was reluctant to rest, but Balin pointed out that after two days of Elvish cooking they could all use a good meal if they were to continue on with any speed without the ponies. The dwarrows took the opportunity to clean and care for their weapons, Bilbo looked from his little dagger to the broad, stout, entirely more lethal-looking dwarvish iron and began to feel Balin’s appraisal of his ‘letter-opener’ was more accurate assessment than friendly joking.

“Elvish blades don’t rust,” Dwalin remarked slightly jealously, eyeing the weapon that was awkwardly resting at Bilbo’s side. “That’s one task taken care of for you.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Bilbo remarked, removing the weapon from its scabbard and examining it with slightly wide eyes. It was clear he had never handled a blade deadlier than a fish knife is his life, he seemed slightly awed by it, but his eyes held not the appreciation of a connoisseur of arms and precious metals. Bofur, Bombur and Bifur, the miners of the group, turned and eyed the weapon prospectively. There had not been much time for anyone aside from Lord Elrond to pay close attention to their prizes from the troll hoard, but any dwarf worth his beard knew mithril when they saw it. The smiths in the Company also beheld the blade with a mixture of envy and longing.

The mithril deposits of the earth were long ago lost to them when Durin’s Bane destroyed the legendary city of Khazad-dûm. Their forces were unstoppable attired in the mail shirts and helms of that precious metal and their shields never splintered, nor did their axes need sharpening. Even in the old days, mithril arms were forged only for kings and their greatest warriors. How ironic that a blade of that make would be wielded by a halfling of all creatures - a halfing who would have his own head off if he didn’t take more care with his sword.

“Watch it!” Dwalin reprimanded him sharply, rising from the patch of ground he was sitting on near Bilbo and walking away. The hobbit stammered an apology and sheathed the sword safely away.

“Haven’t you got any weapons training at all?” Kíli asked curiously. What did the halflings do to defend themselves against wolves, wargs and Orcs? Didn’t they have any natural enemies? Moreover, what did they do for _fun_?

Bilbo shook his head and smiled weakly. “Conkers,” he replied, hitching his shoulders somewhat helplessly. “Actually, when I was much younger my cousins and I - Took cousins, some Brandybucks, the Bagginses were far too nervy for such antics - would play at, er,” _being Elves_ would not go over well with this crowd, “fighting. With twigs and such. Even then, Roper Gamgee would chase us out of the cabbage patches, worried we’d poke our eyes out.”

Those members of the Company who were listening to the halfling exchanged bemused glances with one another. Dwarves adored children, as a rule. Because they were so rare, even an unrelated neighbor could be trusted to keep a watchful eye on the dwarflings of another, but to not allow a child to express itself playing war games seemed a cruel and unusual restriction.

“It’s a wonder hobbit babes learn to walk,” Dori remarked. “I’d think your lot would cart ‘em about ‘til they got too old to carry.”

“Sounds like something you’d enjoy,” Nori smirked. “Maybe you ought to settle in the Shire once all’s said and done - have need of a weaver of uncertain skill among your people, Bilbo?”

Bilbo rolled his eyes and chuckled, “Now, now, fauntlings aren’t _coddled_ , it’s not what you think at all. It’s only dangerous play that’s objected to. Actually - well, I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself, of course, but I remember after we were told off by old Roper climbing a tree by his house and pelting him with acorns as he puttered across his garden. Shameful conduct, really, but he never complained to my parents about it. Must have thought I was a particularly vindictive squirrel.”

The dwarves laughed; now _that_ sounded like childhood misbehaving that was common among all races. “How was your aim?” Bofur inquired.

Bilbo smiled proudly. “Didn’t miss once.”

“Pity we didn’t find a bow for you,” Balin remarked. “Good eyes are best put to use in archery.” For the hobbit’s benefit he added, “We’ve a dearth of sharp-eyed warriors in our race and those that are gifted with long-range vision usually wind up as distance blind as the rest of us in a few years.” With a significant look at Dís he sighed pointedly and shook his head as if in regret. “Of course, _some_ prefer heavy arms above all and never mind if they’ve got the eyes of a seventy-year-old stripling or no.”

“Balin,” Dís chided in a tone of pseudo-shock. “I am appalled - _appalled_ \- that you’d malign my brother’s good reputation like that. He does well enough for himself with axe and sword.”

Thorin looked up at her and grinned briefly. “I’ve been hearing that moaning going on a century now, but I don’t think he was talking about _me_ this time.”

“Both, either,” Balin replied, but he was smiling, so the Company knew there was a joking sense to most of his complaining.

“Kili’s got skill enough for the both of us,” Thorin said dismissively and his younger nephew grinned at the praise. Being the younger son without the burden of being the heir apparent, he could sometimes feel a little dimmed by the attention given Fili - though, to his mother and uncle’s credit, they did not favor one over the other in essentials. If you asked their guardians which of the brothers was the better turned out, they would immediately reply (with all the affection in the world) that both lads were equally foolish.

Speaking of Thorin’s weapons of choice, since he left the halfling’s side, Dwalin had been trying not so subtly to get his king to let him have a look at his newly-acquired sword. Despite his disdain for anything Elvish, Dwalin could not ignore a blade of good make and Thorin was not so jealous in his guard of his possessions that he’d ignore him. After all, he let the Elf Lord handle the sword and he trusted Dwalin above most of his kin, never mind leaders of the race of their enemies.

When Thorin handed the blade over for inspection, Óin let out a guffaw of amused shock. “That’s true friendship,” he remarked approvingly. ”I’ve known warriors who’d let their shield-brothers borrow their wives before their swords.”

“To be fair, those are usually the ones who don’t marry,” Balin winked and the pair of them laughed as if at a shared, secret joke. A bit beyond them, Dwalin and Thorin took the opportunity to blow off pent up anxiety by sparring with one another. Balin shook his head at the pair of them and raised his voice. “We’ll be needing some of that stamina when we cross the Misty Mountains! Save your strength!”

“Got plenty to spare!” Dwalin called back over his left shoulder, getting his head in the bout quickly enough to dodge a blow aimed for his right side.

“Alright!” Nori exclaimed, rubbing his hands together gleefully. “Bets!”

Dís was about to call out her wager when she realized there was a more profitable way to spend her time (and save her money). “Come along, Bilbo, up you get,” Dis said, tugging him to his feet by one arm. “You’ve got a sword, might as well teach you to use it.”

“Oh-ho, what’s this?” Bofur asked over the hobbit’s attempt to demure the offer. Unsurprisingly the mischievous miner sounded positively delighted. “Afternoon entertainment?”

Dis grinned at Bofur, but she was not just doing this to make fun with their hobbit. Gandalf, in his finite wisdom, saw fit to gift the lad a weapon he could not use. If Bilbo wanted that sword put to use as anything other than a decorative bauble to hang from his belt, he had to learn to wield it.

Best to start with the basics she decided as Bilbo drew the little dagger out of its sheath. “Right. Lesson one,” she began briskly, unsheathing her own double-edged sword and using it as an example. It was longer, broader, rougher and altogether more intimidating than the Elvish blade and more confidently held. “See the sharp bit? You’ll want to keep that pointed away from you.”

“And toward your enemies!” Ori added helpfully. Since Dori expressly forbid him gambling, he had already lost interest in Thorin and Dwalin.

Dis shook her head, “You’re getting ahead of us, dear; that’s lesson two.”

With all the agility of youth, Fíli jumped up from where he’d been lying on the ground, tossing his half-spent pipe to Kíli. “Adjust your grip on the hilt, nice and firm - it’s not going to bite you, but here, if you move your hand - which is your sword arm? Do you favor one or the other?”

“Sorry?” Bilbo asked, looking down at his arms bewildered.

“Which hand do you write with?” Ori asked, translating Fíli’s question into something the halfling was likely to understand.

The look of confusion cleared up instantly. “Ah. The right.”

Dís nodded, “Most of our kind can use both without a problem, but it might be a bit late for you to change your ways. Grip the hilt with your right hand nearest the blade - don’t force him, Fíli, he’s not deaf.”

“It’s light, this, lighter than it looks,” Fíli noted, eyeing Bilbo’s blade with the same thinly-veiled appreciation Dwalin bestowed upon Thorin’s Goblin-Cleaver.

“That’s mithril for you,” Dís remarked with a badly suppressed sigh. Would her sons ever wield arms crafted of that precious metal? Or would they go to their graves bedecked in borrowed armor and swords of iron and steel?

 _Ugh, those are foul thoughts,_ she told herself firmly, shaking her head a bit to dislodge them. _No more of that. To business._

"Now, you're a wee thing - it's not an insult!" Dís declared defensively when Bilbo's homely face clouded over.

"Being a 'wee thing,' as you say, surely won't be very helpful against something like an _orc_ ," he scowled, thinking of the great creatures astride their even larger mounts. The fangs of the wargs were longer and thicker than his fingers.

"It's not a matter of size," Balin informed him. "Yours could be an advantage, in some cases. Creatures bleed hard and fast from blows to the legs and if you unseat a mounted rider, you've time to spare while he rights himself and gets his bearings."

"Time?" Bilbo repeated. "Time for what?"

 _To run and hide_ , was what the Baggins in him hoped the reply would be, but before Balin spoke, Bifur answered by drawing his thumb across his throat in a long, deliberate line. Bilbo gulped and nodded; there was one sign that needed no translation.

For a first-timer learner, the hobbit was not half bad. Bilbo was a very attentive and obedient student, even when he was having five different sets of instructions shouted at him by different parties Nevertheless, by the time Thorin ordered them to move again, Dís was fairly confident that their burglar would be able to unsheath his sword without doing himself a harm.

Thorin did not find that terribly heartening. “Waste of an afternoon,” he tutted to her as they walked. It seemed his little tussle with Dwalin did not lift his spirits as such sport usually could be counted on to do. On the contrary, he seemed unhappier now that he had been when they took their leave of the Elves.

“You had the best sparring partner,” she shot back.

“And so you challenged the worst?”

With a small frown, Dís thwacked her brother on the arm, heedless of the pain the scales of his armor caused her knuckles. “Bofur wasn’t joking, you are in a strop. Need I remind you who it was offered him the contract? Your eyes may be good yet, but your memory is _going_ , brother mine.”

Thorin had no reply to make to that, so he kept quiet, staring moodily into the distance. After a long pause, he spoke, though he did not answer her question. “Never been in battle,” he muttered darkly. “Ill-equipt, unprepared. And I let him come along.”

“Are you talking about Bilbo, still?” she asked him gently, but Thorin quickened his pace, walked ahead and did not answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there's anything out there that conclusively says Sting and Orcrist are or are not made of mithril, but I've decided they are so that the Dwarves have an excuse to be slightly bitter about them. It's also my headcanon that in between the montage of sweeping vistas before the Stone Giants scene, SOMEONE decided to be a grown-up and teach Bilbo how to use his sword. It was probably Balin (with Fíli and Kíli as the peanut gallery), but Dís likes to be helpful.


	20. Chapter 20

The black moods were a legacy from his father and one not nearly as welcome to him as that map and key.

Thorin shared equal parts his father’s propensity for melancholy and his mother’s unwavering resolve. The result being that when he was in a poor temper he dragged himself out of bed and went through his day, performing his work and seeing to his duty nearly silently with a scowl on his face. Some, like Glóin and Bofur, might poke fun, while others did all they could to avoid falling under Thorin’s glare.

A precious few, remembering Thráin’s dark humors and long silences, looked on their king with undisguised worry for they knew that whatever emotion was troubling him was most assuredly not anger. They would welcome it if it was, for Thorin’s ire was passionate, noisy and of short duration and these long silences could take hours or days to overcome.

It took Dís herself a few years before she could work out the difference.

 _Is Ada angry with me?_ she remembered asking her mother once when they were traveling after her father barked at her to quicken her pace or ride a pony, lest she get left behind. His mouth was drawn into a tight frown and his remaining eye looked beady and cruel beneath his furrowed brow. If he expected her to walk more quickly, his order had the opposite of the desired effect for she froze and looked at him with wide, nervous eyes.

Thráin turned away and walked ahead, leaving his daughter to stare at the broad, rigid line of his back.

 _Your father isn’t a bit angry,_ her mother picked her up off the ground to carry her the next few miles. Seeing the hurt look on her daughter’s face, Freya shook her head and smoothing her Dís’s dark hair added, with a frown. _Not a bit. Certainly not at you._

Dís was too young to understand at the time that though a soul might seem angry, the raging facade was just that; a front. An intricately carved barrier that concealed deeper wells of emotion. Sorrow, often. Regret, sometimes. Usually guilt.

In her father’s case, it was always fear. And her mother loathed fear in all its manifestations. She kept her own council, distracted her children and refused to speak to him until he approached her, manfully, without his anxiety-borne peevishness. In the privacy of her own thoughts, Dís reflected that Freya could be awfully cruel when she chose to be. Perhaps she herself was too soft-hearted, but she would never ignore her brother like that, not when he was in pain even from invisible wounds.

Lucky for Thorin there were a few good souls who share that opinion. Many was the night she saw Dwalin join her brother when he sat alone by a campfire, scorning all company and glowering at those who would come by. Without asking permission he would sit by him and share a pipe until Thorin relaxed enough to converse. Frerin was not as thoughtful, plunking himself down at his brother’s side (or on his brother’s back or in his brother’s lap on one or two memorable occasions) and chattered his ear off until Thorin snapped at him to shut up or laughed.

But Frerin was gone now and it was Dwalin and Dís who practically flanked Thorin as they trekked across the wilderness. When he quickened his pace, they adjusted theirs so he was never too far from their reach. Every once in a while, he’d glance at them over his shoulder with a disgruntled look, but Dwalin merely met his gaze with a would-be innocent expression as though it was hardly _his_ fault Thorin continually found him a solid half-step behind him after hours of hiking. Dís was not nearly so coy and simply smiled at him when he caught her eye. Once she waved.

Some of the tension around Thorin’s eyes lifted and he looked as is if he wanted to laugh, but thought better of it. That was honestly the most irritating part of his bad tempers: the coming out of it. It seemed for all the world as though Thorin thought if he smiled or laughed or acted as if all the world’s burdens weren’t his to bear that no one would believe him genuine when he truly was so weighted down with worry that he forgot how to breathe.

So he bit back smiles and held in laughter for much longer than he wanted to.

“Looks like rain,” Balin commented. If Dwalin and Dís made it their mission never to be a step away from Thorin, he tried not fall more than two steps behind any of them.

Dwalin rolled his eyes. “You always think it’s going to rain,” he replied dismissively, but he could not deny that there was a heaviness to the air unusual at this altitude and the leaves on the few trees they passed showed their pale bellies to the wind.

“Better to plan for rain and find yourself sunburned than be soaking in a downpour,” Balin replied serenely.

Dís smiled over her shoulder. “Who’s that from?” she asked, assuming Balin was quoting some long-dead scholar whose name she should know, but hadn’t bothered to remember.

The elder dwarf sniffed a bit imperiously. “That was one of my own; I thought it was rather a good one.”

Two steps ahead of him, for the first time all day, Thorin laughed.

“Ah, and _there_ he is,” Dwalin muttered under his breath, so quietly that Dís was sure she was the only one who heard.

Feeling some of the tension drain out of her own shoulders, Dís sneaked up alongside her brother nudging him on the arm. This time when she smiled at him he returned it, albeit wanly. “We were worried you’d been turned to stone some miles back and we’ve been following a statue all this time.”

“Mightn’t be a bad thing,” Thorin mused. “I’d certainly mind the rain a great deal less if was made of rock.”

“Aye, true enough, but think of the up-keep,” Dís pointed out. “We’d have to keep cleaning the moss off and birds’d try to make their nests on you - you’d be a bad combination of those trolls and the Brown Wizard.”

“Half troll and half wizard?” he remarked, raising his eyebrows thoughtfully. “Nasty business. Couldn’t hardly expect you to follow me under such a spell.”

Dís smiled again and slipped her hand through the crook of her brother’s elbow, giving his arm a brief squeeze. “Nah. It’d take more than that for you to be rid of me,” she replied, a joke and reassurance in one.

A cry of dismay from the back of the group made them all halt and abruptly ended the moment of tranquility at the front. “I’m _fine_ , I tell you, just need to catch my breath!”

It was their burglar whose narrow chest and lungs were more accustomed to taking in the flower-scented air of the Shire rather than the thin atmosphere of the mountains. He’d fallen behind for the first time in their journey and was surrounded, amusingly enough, by the fathers in the group. “You look peaky,” Glóin observed frowning. “Don’t like your color at all.”

“I thought your brother was the Healer,” Bilbo replied, trying for levity, but he did look a little ill under his mop of curls. “I’m really fine.”

“Do you want something to eat?” Bombur asked, already unfastening his pack. “Barley biscuits, they’re not easy on the teeth, but - ”

“No, it’s alright; I’m not hungry.”

The effect those three words ‘I’m not hungry,’ had on the Company was remarkable. If their burglar had instead said, ‘I think I’m dying,’ or, 'I've just had an arm severed,' they could not have reacted with more alarm.

  
“Not _hungry_ ,” Bofur repeated, dumbfounded. “Not _hungry_? What’s this, Mister Seven-Meals-a-Day?”

Óin was too deaf to hear Bilbo’s softly-voiced refusal of food, but he heard Bofur’s bellowing loud and clear. “Mountain sickness,” he diagnosed, untying a waterskin from his pack and handing it to the hobbit. “Used to happen to the wee ones on the crossings.”

“I’m not a child,” Bilbo muttered, but he drank the water anyway.

“Nay - carefully, don’t gulp it, you’ll be sick - but neither are you a dwarf,” Óin replied. “Those feet of yours might find the rocks easy enough to tread, but the rest of you needs a rest.”

The other dwarves glanced at one another and looked away; no one wanted to be the one to approach Thorin and ask for a reprieve for their burglar. Not only were they convinced the request would be refused, they did not fancy facing down his irritation and dislike of the halfling as they did.

“If someone takes my pack, I can carry him easily enough,” Dori offered, seeing Thorin making his way toward them. “It’s nothing! Don’t mind us, we’ll catch up!” he called making a little ‘shooing’ gesture with his hands. Thorin paused, but did not resume his place at the front of the group, unwilling to leave anyone behind.

Nori shifted his own pack and held out a hand, “I’ll take it.”

His brother gave him a searching look before handing his bags over to him. “I expect everything to be in its place when it’s returned to me,” he said severely. “Down to the slenderest needle.”

“I’ve no use for your needles,” Nori scoffed, adjusting the weight of the packs evenly across his shoulders.

“Don’t I know it,” Dori sighed, crouching down before Bilbo and making an impatient gesture. “Alright, Mister Baggins, up you get - and if you say, ‘I couldn’t possibly,’ I’ll tuck you under one arm and carry you that way. You’ve got my personal assurance that neither your head nor your stomach will thank you for that.”

It had, in fact, been on the tip of Bilbo’s tongue to refuse, but the churning in his stomach and lightness between his ears coupled with Dori’s threat made him clamber on the dwarf’s back with an embarrassed, “Thank you,” on his lips.

“No more trouble than it’s worth,” Dori replied. Actually, he reflected to himself, listening to Nori loudly asking Ori why he didn’t keep a sharper eye on the ponies, the burglar was a bit lighter than his bags had been.

“Take a biscuit,” Bombur urged, pressing one of the dense, hard cake into Bilbo’s hand. “It’ll settle your stomach.”

“Is that taken care of, then?” Thorin asked, impatiently.

“Aye!” Dori held Bilbo in place with one arm and waved Thorin on with the other. “I told you go on ahead! No one ever listens to a word I say.”

“Sorry?” Kíli asked, sticking a finger in his ear to clear it out. “Could’ve sworn I heard something.”

Fíli caught on to his brother’s jest and cocked his head as though listening. “Me too. Strange. Must’ve been the wind. Ori! D’you hear anything just now?”

Ori smiled and shrugged his shoulders, “Not a word.”

The _only_ thing that stayed Dori from chasing the irritating little so-and-sos around the mountain was the fact that he did not fancy the burglar getting sick all over his traveling clothes in the pursuit.

When the clouds merged dark and thick overhead, bringing with them pouring rain and searing the lightning, there was no more time for jokes. Indeed, the terrain had grown so rough and treacherous that there was not room enough for Dori to carry Bilbo any longer as the path narrowed to a precarious ledge. The hobbit was feeling a bit better and, being smaller and lighter than his companions, had less difficulty walking and moving up the mountainside. Nevertheless, Bofur stayed close at his side, often throwing an arm out across his chest when the wind picked up.

“Wouldn’t want you to get blown away!” he yelled right into Bilbo’s ear over noise of the storm.

The three youngest members of the Company were faring particularly badly. Never having traveled any great distance from the Blue Mountains before, they were never exposed outside during bad storms, but tucked safely away behind thick walls of stone while the wind whipped and lightning streaked across the sky. Kíli nearly jumped out of his skin at the first clap of thunder which sounded so loud and rumbled so terribly that he felt it in his bones. Only now did Dís fall out of step with her brother, falling behind to walk along with her sons. Not a word was spoken between them about it, but their steps were surer and their faces more determined when she was there to lay a steadying hand on Fíli’s shoulder or lunge forward to grip Kíli’s coat when outermost edges of the ledge gave way.

“Never seen a storm like this!” Dwalin shouted at her, his voice swallowed up by the wind.

“What?” she called, feeling rather like Óin without his ear trumpet. Balin called out some warning, but Dwalin pretended not to hear him and squeeze his way back along the rock until he was at Dís’s side.

“This storm - ” he began again, then his eyes went wide and he shoved her hard against the rock at her back. The two of them narrowly avoided being brained by a boulder which rolled down the sheer face of the cliff, smashing to smithereens in the canyon below. Ori was half crouched, clinging to the rock, afraid to move. Dwalin gave Dís’s shoulder a quick squeeze before he carefully picked his way around Bilbo and Bofur to urge Ori to keep walking. “Come along, lad, it’ll only be worse the longer we tarry!”

The thunder came again, unexpectedly this time, with no accompanying bolt of light across the sky. It was so close and powerful the ground beneath their feet quaked. Kíli pitched forward a few feet, but was caught and steadied by Nori. Both Bilbo and little Ori lost their balance and would have tumbled from the cliffside if Dwalin’s quick hands hadn’t grabbed them by their coats to pull them back.

“Look out!” Dís screamed, shoving Bofur and Fíli’s heads down and ducking her own. Another boulder smashed into the rock just above them, raining pebbles upon their heads and shoulders like hailstones.

Further ahead, she thought she heard Balin’s voice, but it was thin and reedy, the words garbled and indistinct. Bofur, she heard clearly enough and thank the Maker he spoke because if his words did not confirm the incredible sight before Dís’s eyes she would have feared she was going mad.

It seemed a piece of the mountain itself broke away and gained life. The creature was almost impossible to fathom due only to the sheer, awesome size of it. The crude body, the lumbering limbs was like nothing she had ever seen before and she hoped she never would again. The face, though, that was the worst of it. Blind, deaf and dumb. Despite its size and power there seemed to be no mind that drove the destruction, no rhyme or reason to its actions. And that was the most frightening thing of all.

They were nothing to these creatures. They had no quarrel with them, they did not have the dignity of being annoying insects in their sightless eyes. The stone giants did not even know they existed. They’d been scorned by Men, fought and bled against enemies who loathed them and feasted with kin who loved them, but none of the dwarves had ever been _nothing_ before.

Another boulder was hurled at them and Dís stepped back as far against the rock as she could feeling the stone crumble beneath her boots. Beside her, her eldest son noticed a crack forming rapidly in the rock between them. “What’s happening?” Kíli asked his brother with wide eyes, frightened eyes as the rain fell like tears across his face.

The crack was rapidly becoming a fissure and, despite the danger, Fíli reached out for his brother urging him, “Grab my hand, Kíli!” Their fingers twinned tightly together and they were stumbling, falling as the mountain tried to wrench them apart.

But it wasn’t the mountain at all; the arms that went tight around his waist, pulling him back, away from his brother were his mother’s and her voice was in his ear, “Let go, you’ll fall! You have to let go of him, Fíli!”

 _No_ , he thought desperately. _Never._ But Nori wrenched Kíli away and they lost their grip on one another before the plummeted into the darkness of the ravine - not a ravine, a gap between the legs of by far the largest of the creatures, awakened from a slumber of unfathomable years by the chaos around it.

It was all anyone could do to cling on for dear life, to the rocks, to each other as the ground splintered and shook and moved. Half the group made a mad scramble to safety on a nearby cliff and could only watch, dumbstruck and horrified as their kin faced their uncertain fate among the giants.

Kíli was constantly looking over his shoulder, trying to spot his brother or his mother over the distances. _Come on,_ he thought to himself desperately, squinting into the rain. _You’ve good eyes. It’s your best feature. Where are they? Come on, put ‘em to use._

When he finally saw them, hurtling toward the side of the mountain, he wished he was blind.

Time seemed to slow, Fíli saw the craggy rock coming toward them, but it was as though he was under water. He thought of his brother, his uncle, thought he heard their voices loudest above the shouts of the company and roar of the wind. The rock loomed closer, but suddenly he could see no more as the air was all but squeeze out of his lungs. It was not the hard rocks that held him fast, but a strong pair of arms which gathered him up in a vain attempt to protect him from having all his bones shattered and splintered.

He could see nothing of the stone because his mother had gathered him close to her and pressed his face against her shoulder in an instinctive attempt to shield him from harm. He could feel her pulse thrumming wildly in her neck, but the rest of her body was solid as a mountain.

Dís could not say if she screamed or not. She ought to have done, anyone would facing down certain death for the third time in as many weeks. But really, she did not think she did for in these last seconds, she felt no fear, at least not for herself. She felt anger. Deep burning anger, for her sons and for her brother. _This is not fair!_ she railed silently, cursing their Maker, Fate, and herself equally. _You have to right to take us from each other. Not now!_

But the stones were coming and all she could do was hold her son and pray, but she was distracted by Bofur beside her who, until now rigid and tense, relaxed suddenly. The miner’s body knew instinctively what his panicking mind still did not grasp: this would not kill them.

There was space enough to fall, tug and grip without being crushed to death. He delved deep into the heart of the Blue Mountains, he spent his days surrounded by stone and he knew what cave-in death looked like. It would not be their fate.

Neither Thorin nor Kíli knew that, they only saw the rocks slamming together and the body of the impossible creature falling farther down. The uncle and nephew’s faces were mirror images of horror and fear. In that instant their hearts beat as one and they shared the same thought, _No! I cannot go on without you!_

Both cried out at the same time for the most important person in their life, the one whose loss they feared more than anything.

“Dís!”

“Fíli!”

The two, lying quite safely amid the rubble looked up just in time to see Thorin’s face melt into a smile of heartbreaking relief. He ran to them and pulled them to their feet before he gathered both of them into a crushing embrace which they returned fiercely. He probably would have tried to include Dwalin as well if Balin wasn’t already hauling his younger brother up and checking him over for broken bones. “I’m fine!” Dwalin protested. “We’re alive!”

But their relief was short-lived when Bofur realized one of their number was missing. “Where’s Bilbo?”

The halfing was dangling over the edge of the cliff, his fingers bone white against the dark stone. Ori tried to reach him to pull him to safety, but the angle was bad and Bilbo slipped further down, the rock breaking beneath his desperate fingers. “Grab my hand!” Bofur urged, crouching next to Ori and reaching out, but Bilbo was paralyzed by dread.

If he let go, he would fall. If he held on, he would fall.

Adrenaline quickening his blood, Thorin broke away from his family and slid down the mountainside, taking a firm hold of the hobbit’s arm and practically throwing him at Bofur. Dís raced to the edge and saw her brother lose his hold and for one heart-stopping moment, slip. This time, she did scream.

Yet now, as ever, Dwalin was never more than half a step away. He took a firm hold of Thorin’s arm and caught him in a motion as instinctive as breathing. Theirs was a bond that ran deep, from the halls of Erebor, to the killing fields of Moria, to a mountain in a storm and they need speak no words to confirm it. When their eyes locked there was only one thought shared between them, _I trust you._

“Come on,” Dwalin growled, pulling his friend with both arms as Thorin tried to find a foothold. “Up you get.”

As soon as Thorin was on his feet, Dís made no pretence of stoicism. She threw her arms around Dwalin’s neck from behind and kissed him hard on the top of the head. Dwalin chuckled, a sound that was just slightly frayed and hysterical around the edges. “I thought we lost our burglar,” he commented, looking up at Thorin as if to say, _Of course, I knew you’d survive. You see? I won’t let anything happen to you._

But Thorin wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he was looking at the halfing with an expression of mingled fury and contempt. “He’s been lost ever since he left home,” he said breathlessly. “He never should have come. He has no place amongst us.”

When Thorin stalked away, Dís loosened her grip around Dwalin’s neck. Both of them were looking at Bilbo whose expression was more stricken than when he’d been hanging from a cliffside. “He’s - ” Dís started to say, but her brother’s call for Dwalin cut her off and the whole Company began to move again.

 _He’s not angry,_ she wanted to say. _Not a bit. Certainly not at you. Can’t you see it? He’s terrified._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated whether or not to make this two different chapters, but I wrote it as one and I think there are some nice themes weaving their way though that would seem more disjointed if I switched it up. Apologies for the rapid POV switching, but the Fíli & Kíli 'grab my hand' is TOO good a moment not to explore. 
> 
> Writing the Stone Giants scene without making at least one character literally say, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?" was a LOT harder than it sounds. Also, when I was writing it out originally, one of the sentences I wrote was, "And thus it was that the Company of Thorin Oakenshield collectively wet themselves," before I changed it to something more dignified. I'll leave you to figure out where it was ;-)


	21. Chapter 21

By rights, the shelter of the cave should have served as a balm for her, soothed her frazzled nerves. Being surrounded by stone should make her feel better, not worse, but a small, nagging voice in the back of Dis’s head whispered that they might fare better exposed on the mountainside.

There should have been a giddiness amongst the Company, the floating-on-air feeling of invulnerability that came when one was close enough to the spectre of death to spit in his eye. But spirits were as water-logged as their clothes and though they glanced among themselves, no one laughed or joked. Thorin’s bad mood and harsh comments to their burglar made them all slightly uncomfortable. Everyone wanted to say _something_ , either to offer a word of reassurance, a joke, or change the subject entirely to help him forget the insult, but none dared do so while Thorin’s nerves were so frayed and they were in such tight quarters he would surely overhear one of his companions criticizing his conduct toward the halfling. They were a loyal troupe and loyalty among dwarves often meant turning a blind eye to inconsiderate behavior.

Dís too was loyal, but she knew her brother’s manner with the hobbit was something more than mere dislike. Thorin was deeply troubled by his presence for reasons she had not quite worked out. One thing she did know was that he would never have spoken to any of their fellow dwarves in such a way. To berate them for mistakes of judgment as he did with Kíli and Fíli was all very well, but he would not say they did not belong among them. For where else could they belong, if not with one another?

The hobbit was not kin, nor even a friend-like-kin, but something in-between friend and stranger. He did not deserve Thorin’s scorn regardless of what provoked it.

When Dwalin declared the cave safe and Thorin ordered a more thorough search, Dís took her chance to approach him while the others were distracted. “What is it?” he snapped, but she was better equipt to face down his anger than most.

“Stop,” she commanded quietly. It was all she said, all she could say given that they did not have time enough or privacy for her to coax the truth of his fear and anger from him. Were they in the Blue Mountains she might have fixed a pot of coffee, taken the tin of pipeweed from the mantle, eased him into conversation, but there was no time to soothe and cajole here. Nor was she free to speak as openly as she might if it was just the two of them.

_I know you’re afraid, but that’s no excuse for cruelty. We survived, didn’t we? Let that be enough for now._

The look his sister gave him was not unkind, but Dís’s eyes conveyed her disappointment. The hard line of Thorin’s mouth softened a little and his eyes flickered from her to Bilbo, small and dripping, trying to stay out of everyone’s way. Then Glóin mentioned that they ought to get a fire started. The tension was back immediately.

“No. No fires,” Thorin forbade him. “Not in this place.”

None of the dwarves were particularly relaxed, even within the rock. Something deeper than the knowledge afforded by what their eyes could see and ears could hear, something primal that writhed in their bellies and crawled up their spines had them on tenderhooks. If one of them spoke up about it, all would agree that the cave was unsafe, though none could explain precisely why they felt that way. They were Dwarves, they trusted what they could see and hear and touch, to waffle on about strange feelings and odd intuitions was practically Elvish in sentiment. In any case, they could hardly move on, not with the storm still raging outside. Practical, was the secret race of Mahal, always practical.

“Get some sleep,” Thorin ordered them. “We start at first light.”

Balin started at that and exchanged a look with Dís, who only shrugged at him. This alteration to their intended route did not trouble her as much as Thorin’s dark mood. To be perfectly honest, she would be content never to lay eyes upon the wizard as long as she lived. What had he done for them? Aside from gifting them the map and key - the question of how he came by them in the first place niggled at her mind, even if her brother was content not knowing - and taking them to an Elf who could read the runes upon the map, what had he done for them? Nothing that they could not have done themselves and he’d caused them a great deal of trouble besides.

“We were to wait in the mountains until Gandalf joined us,” Balin reminded Thorin, some testiness bleeding into his voice. It was to be expected; not ten minutes ago he thought he lost his brother. “ _That_ was the plan.”

“Plans change,” Thorin said, without an ounce of respect in his voice. Dwalin frowned deeply, but he knew better than to say a word about it. When Thorin was being short with _Balin_ of all dwarves, it was a sure sign he was nearing his breaking point. “Bofur, take first watch.”

The miner nodded glumly and, Thorin, as ever he did when he was in such a foul temper that even _he_ could not stand being with himself, lay his bedroll down apart from the Company and spoke no more to anyone.

“Want me to give him a kick in the head when I lay down to sleep?” Dís leaned down to whisper into Balin’s ear. “I could make it look like an accident.”

Not a muscle moved in Balin’s face, he was looking at Thorin, whose back was to them all, with something like apprehension. Dís nudged his arm and tried once again for levity. “Come on, then, you can’t be _that_ upset, eh?”

Shaking his white head, Balin sighed slightly. “Lord Elrond said something at Rivendell that troubled me then, about Thorin possessing your grandfather’s bearing,” he replied to Dís in a soft voice, nodding at Thorin. “Aye. So he does.”

 _Doesn’t_ , Dís’s mind recoiled from the notion, her negative reaction almost childish in its petulance. _Take it back. He doesn’t at all._

When her grandfather was in a good humor, Thrór was the finest dwarf to walk beneath the earth. His blue eyes twinkled with merriment, his booming laughter seemed to reach right into your chest and make you want to laugh along with him. Dís remembered nights by the fireside, sitting in his lap, resting her head on his shoulder or burying her face in his beard as he told stories and sang songs in their sacred tongue, sometimes joking with her mother. He was one of the few souls who could always make her father smile.

Those were her memories of her grandfather. Smiling, laughing, working. Dís never knew him to be otherwise, which she only later realized was by design.

When the madness was upon him or he was grieved or sorrowful, Thrór would retreat. She never knew what he was like in the throes of the gold sickness, she was shielded from all that. By her brother, who tended to their grandfather and their parents who never wanted her to recoil from him in wariness if she glimpsed him at his weakest. The burden fell to Thorin who also retreated, locking up his fear and hurt deep in a cavern within his heart, better concealed to the world than any dwarf-door ever made.

But...but her brother was different. She knew him. And she would never let him be alone. It was different. It was.

Turning away from Balin without speaking, Dís unfurled her damp bedroll not beside Thorin, but close enough and noisily enough that he knew she was within arm’s reach. As they settled down for sleep Kíli laid his bedroll down beside his mother’s without a word of explanation, just as she had done with Thorin.

“Tired of your brother’s snoring, are you?” she winked at him and Kíli smiled and nodded a little too eagerly. A quick glance around the cave revealed that he was not the only one who sought to keep his family close by. Ori was tightly wedged between his brothers as they settled in for the night and Bombur and Bifur were a little too close to the place where Bofur kept watch to call the proximity an accident. If Dwalin and Balin and Óin and Glóin happened to pull up a patch of ground beside each other, no one could say a word. They’d all come so to death that night, who could ridicule them?

Only Bilbo had no one to pair with the stave away the fear and the chill. Dís saw him lying so still and motionless that she hoped sleep found him quickly and he would wake only half-remembering her brother’s words. In the meantime, her sons were proving a suitable distraction for her.

“Aye,” Kíli replied to her question, laying down and tucking his hands behind his head. “Then again, might be a benefit. ‘Least he’ll drown out the storm.”

“It’s not my snoring that’s the problem, little brother,” Fíli commented, rolling out his bedding beside Kíli. “It’s your big ears that catch every wee quiet sound in the night - hey now, that’s not hardly sporting!”

Dís reached over Kíli to give Fíli a smack on the arm. “Those big ears are a family legacy,” she sniffed at him before she lay down herself. “And I’ll thank you not to speak so low of them in my hearing.”

“I’d have to go back to Rivendell to avoid _your_ hearing,” Fíli teased. “Since it’s you they were passed down from!”

“Kíli, be a dear and hit your brother for me,” Dís rolled over and spread her cloak over her in an attempt to soak some of the wet out of her clothes.

“Ow!”

The lads quieted down soon thereafter and the only sounds that filled the cave were snores and heavy breathing. It was a soothing symphony, for Dwarves were creatures unaccustomed to complete quiet, even living within rock as they did. Despite the uneasy feeling of the cave and the earlier terror, Dís was lulled to sleep herself, her last thought before she dozed off a wish that the morning would lift everyone’s spirits.

Not very long after she dropped off, Dís woke up suddenly when something caught her long, unbound hair and pulled it. She opened her eyes to darkness for it was still terribly late. Irritated, she twisted round to see what clumsy oaf stepped on her hair, but that tug was there again, harder and then loosened as she swept her hair up, turning her head to the side. All her annoyance swept away and a fond smile graced her lips when she saw Fíli, the little imp, had packed up his bedroll and moved. Now he was wedged between his mother and brother and lay fast asleep beside her, one hand unconsciously curled in her hair as he used to do when he was a babe.

In the darkness, assured that all their fellows were asleep, Dís smiled at him fondly and pressed a soft kiss to the tip of his nose and her eldest son smiled in his sleep. A pang in her chest, like a fist around her heart accompanied the action. Her lads were nearly grown now and while she did not exactly mourn the loss of their childhoods, this quest was dangerous and there was every possibility that none of them would live to see Erebor reclaimed. It was a frightful thing, to know that she might bury one or both of her sons, her brother, her Dwalin, her kinsmen.

Yet she the longer she thought on it, the more grateful she felt for how much better was it to worry _with_ them, rather than simply _for_ them!

It was an inheritance of all dwarrowdams, to bury fathers, husbands and sons. To endure as all else fell away. They were creatures whose Maker carved them from the rock of the earth and it was to that same rock they were interred when their souls fled to the Halls of Waiting. Dwarf women suffered their own Waiting here on earth, staying behind from battle, enduring until they were all that remained. Alone. And if there was something that frightened Dís more than the notion that all their struggles might be in vain it was the prospect of being utterly alone.

 _I will die with them,_ she thought as she drifted off. If it came to that, she would. Better to fall with her kin and kith than wait endlessly in the Blue Mountains for the arrival of thirteen black ribbons. Such an unlucky number. _Thorin’s lucky I joined in. I’ll remind him when I wake. Might make him smile..._

But she woke to shouts and glimmers of light and a sudden, terrible fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey gang, I've got a question for you. We're getting close to the end of the film and I was wondering what to do about that. I could continue the story and just go off on my own (over the edge of the wild, as it were), or I could put it on hiatus until December and pick it up for _Desolation of Smaug_. What do you think? 
> 
> I'm of two minds, personally. Since this is a kink meme fill, I do feel pressure to _finish_ it and I have a few future scenes sketched out already, so I could just keep going. On the other hand it looks like there's a ton of fun stuff being added to the next movie that I want to incorporate (I really want Dís and Tauriel to have some dialogue, for instance, and I'm dying to know whatever it is Nori does to get them in trouble, I'm sure Dís's POV on that will be hilarious). On the other-other hand, that means there's a very real possibility this story won't be finished until 2015 and I'm not sure any of us have the stamina for that.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to **warn** for **fantasy racism**. The POV about how they're basically the worst ever could be slightly triggering, even if no one reading this empathizes with the goblins per se. But if you can stomach the speciesism, I'm worked some Dwarf v. Goblin headcanon into this chapter. Also, some fun trivia, see if you can answer this question: What exactly IS Balin quoting?

The first thing that hit Dís, before she could collect her bearings, was the terrible stench. Ignorant Men often equated Goblins and Dwarves in their minds, but though both races were comprised of small creatures who dwelled beneath the earth, that was where the similarities ended. The underground halls of the Dwarf kings of old were legendary, the carvings and gemstones that glittered in the walls shone brighter than the light of a thousand stars and were counted more beautiful by far than the grandest cities of Men.

Goblins toiled not, nor did they create. They were parasites beneath the earth, taking, but never _using_. Their caverns were truly caves, dingy and covered over with filth. They clothed themselves not in silks and sables, but mere scraps stolen or lifted from the bodies of corpses. Their bodies were not bedecked with jewels and carved metals, but decorated only with dried flesh and bones.

She was surrounded by that wormy grey flesh, pawed at and herded like so much cattle. That was the terrible menace of the goblins, their weapons were crude, their skill in battle all but nonexistent, but they could overwhelm the mightiest army through sheer numbers alone. They could speak the tongue of Men and ape their mannerisms, but were themselves more akin to animals than anything else.

They were at the mercy of beasts and as Dís shook them off, wrenching her limbs and hair out of their grasp, desperately searching for her kin among their number, she could not help but remember that it was in a mine overtaken by goblins that her father lost his eye and nearly his life along with it.

Kíli’s shouts alerted her to the location of her sons, so near on the narrow ramp, but still out of reach. Of course it would be Kíli snarling and screaming his frustration. Fíli preferred to grit his teeth and clench his fists, and there he was, writhing and twisting alongside his brother even as Thorin reached for them and was wrenched away from both boys.

Letting out a scream that was more like a roar, Dís knocked the creature whose hands were at her belt, tearing her sword - _Frerin’s_ sword - away from her back, but two more were there to replace him, pulling her arms behind her back as her weapons were taken from her. The smell and the smoke from their torches was unbearable, suffocating and blinding by turns, but she had borne the heat and stink of makeshift forges and kept her eyes open, seeking out her sons and brother - _any_ of her kin. As they were jostled along the narrow, rotting walkway, she would catch a glimpse of her fellows here and there, but never more than that before they were hurried along and all she could see was the sneering leer of one of their captors.

A hand fell on her arm and she nearly shook it off with a snarl before she recognized that it was not the twitching, bony fingers of the goblins, but a big warm, calloused grip she recognized even through her clothes. Dwalin was beside her and Thorin, she saw now, only a few steps ahead, the boys being dragged along despite Fíli’s taut, resisting shoulders and the drag of Kíli’s feet.

Like herself and Thorin, Dwalin did not vocally protest apart from the growls and frustrated grunts they could not help but make. His jaw was set and his eyes flinty. “How did we miss this?” Dís asked, angrier with herself than their captors. There was something off about that cave, something foul, they all felt it, yet they said nothing.

Dwalin shook his head. “Too late for that,” he advised, his voice a low rumble in her ear, a comfort that kept her from panicking as she had on that cliffside mere hours ago. “Don’t think of it.”

He was right, for now they had to use all their cunning to contrive a way out of this miserable hole. The cavern seemed to go on for miles in all directions, no rhyme or reason to it. They just burrowed, like moles and destroyed all in their path. The goblins were a pestilence beneath the earth, but a _dangerous_ pestilence and, Dís could not help but cringe when she heard their weapons scrape and clatter as they were thrown roughly to the ground, they were unarmed in their midst.

The Goblin King was a grotesque. Dís had seen more of the world and its ills in her relatively short lifetime than most dwarrowdams did in three-hundred years, but she had to swallow down the bile that rose in her throat upon setting eyes on him. His pale, diseased flesh strained to contain the girth of him and open sores glistened with pus at the edges, like some gross parody of the jewels and rings that adorned the robes of the kings of Men, Elves and Dwarves.

The voice that issued forth from that tumescence was learned enough in the speech of Men that if one closed one’s eyes, they might mistake him for one of the Children of Eru, but there was little humanity to be found in such a creature, no divine spark. Among the Children of Mahal it was rumored that as they were molded from stone, so were Goblins whelped in mud and filth. But what their Maker’s name was, none could say. It seemed there was no celestial hand in their creation, or, if there was, they were some rude approximation of mimicking that which came before or a failed attempt to imagine what would come after.

They stood together now before him, looking up at the putrid flesh and those half-mad yellow eyes. The Company was granted only a brief reprieve before the call to search them came and once again those sticky, worm-like fingers were upon them. The gold Dís pocketed from the troll hoard was spilled upon the floor and though the goblins eyed it greedily, they made no move to pick it up from where it fell. Did they understand the value of gold? The only thing they treasured was corruption.

“What are you doing in these parts?” the Goblin King demanded.

No one spoke a word. Bofur actually caught her eye over Glóin’s head and Dís read his expression plain as daylight, _Can you believe that eejit?_ She merely grimaced in response; talk or no talk, they were at his mercy, which the Goblin King knew all too well when he threatened torture.

Goblins were vile creatures who flinched from sunlight and trained not for war, they were stupid in all things save one. In the causing of pain, that foul, forgotten race could be deeply cunning. They did not kill cleanly; they preferred their victims - not foes, always victims - to suffer beforehand. The beast that attacked her father so many years ago was not content to simply kill him. If that was all it desired, it could have driven a dagger through his breast and had done honorably. Goblins knew not honor. It wanted to _maim_ him, to see the flesh bubble and melt upon his face before it dealt the killing blow.

Such a thing sickened the heart of a dwarf. They were warriors to the heart, but they were not murderers nor were they sadists. They killed to protect their homes, seal their honor and avenge their dead. To slay an enemy in combat was a satisfying and noble thing; to watch them linger and delight in their cries of pain was the mark of a madman, not a warrior.

Thorin was a warrior. Built of honor and nobility and he was a dwarf who would not stand by while a lad of seventy-five years was torn to shreds to keep his silence. “Wait!” Thorin called, walking unfettered until he stood before the massive form of the Goblin King. Dís and Dwalin moved forward as one to the very edge of the cluster, their eyes trained upon their king all the while. Though smaller in stature, Thorin was a towering presence among the decay, even the goblin’s taunts could not strip him of his dignity.

“Well, well, well!” he said, a parody of a familiar greeting. “Look who it is! Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain.”

Thorin’s jaw tightened, but he stood their, chin tilted down slightly even as his eyes looked up. It was a trick, almost, he developed when they worked among Men. He hardly ever looked upon those creatures taller than them with his head tilted back and his neck bared. It made him look and feel too vulnerable.

“Oh! But I’m forgetting,” he rose from his bow, great belly swinging and swaying over the scraps that covered his lower half. “You don’t have a mountain. And you’re not a king. Which makes you...nobody, really.”

The goblins sniggered and sneered, but the Dwarves stared back defiantly, not a one cowed by the words which were so carefully chosen to wound. They didn’t feel a one of them. Thorin was more a king than this great stain beneath the earth would know or could know. Did he think to rattle him? To unnerve a dwarf in their Company with a reminder of all they did not have? The knew that deprivation every day and the words of this king of death, this king of filth passed over their ears like a breeze.

“No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it,” Balin muttered darkly, as though reading her very thoughts. A quote, Dís recalled dimly, but one she could not place and did not attempt to as the Goblin King’s next statement made her go cold inside as his previous mockery had not.

“I know someone who would pay a pretty price for your head.”

The mountain might not bow, but the king who ruled it could be brought to its knees. Dís was not on the battlefield when her grandfather was slain, but she heard her brother’s screams in the night often enough that the imagined sight of him, so strong, so venerable, cut low and defiled began to haunt her dreams as well.

 _Defiled._ No. No, it could not be.

Could _not_. The only thing that brought Thorin a measure of solace was the knowledge that his grandfather had been avenged. If he could have removed the head from the shoulders of the monstrous orc he would have done so, but the knowledge that the creature was stricken with death brought him some satisfaction, but no joy.

“Azog the Defiler was destroyed,” Thorin said in response to the Goblin King’s blustering, his eyes haunted with remembrance. “He was slain in battle long ago.”

Dís was probably the only one who noticed how Thorin’s voice shook when he spoke, just on the edge of losing his composure. She longed to reach out to him, but he was too far to touch and the gesture would be more hindrance than help.

“He’s lying,” Dís whispered under her breath, willing Thorin to hear her despite the distance. “He’s _lying._ ”

But if this was a bluff, it was one to which the Goblin King was willing to go far to have them believe. “Send word to the Pale Orc,” he ordered what passed for a scribe among their race. “Tell him I have found his prize.”

It seemed the Goblins’ taste for torture would override even promises made to wicked comrades, or, as the Gobling King pointed out, smiling with a mouth of yellow, broken teeth, “It’s only the one head, of course. He never requested a _collection_ of dwarves. And aren’t we allowed our fun when you were so obliging as to stumble into our midst?”

Cruel looking scourges were brought down on their backs, beastly leather things stuck throughout with bits of bone and stone and broken glass. The goblins seemed content at first to simply whirl them around while their leader led them in an awful chant, but when Thorin’s Elvish blade fell before his eyes, Dís saw fear flash on that putrid, fleshy face for the first time since they were brought before him and she almost smiled.

 _Never show them that you fear them_ , she remembered learning at her mother’s knee. She spoke of Elves, then, after Dís’s fateful encounter with a drawn bow in the woods. _For if they know you fear them, they know you can be defeated._

The Goblin King was apoplectic with fear. His subjects raced about, bringing those wicked weapons upon the backs and sides of the captive dwarves. Dís heard Kíli wail in pain and she pushed him bodily out of the way, taking those blows meant for him onto herself. The lash was brought down upon her back hard enough to bruise, even through the boiled leather armor she war. The thongs bit into the exposed flesh of her neck and arms, but she did not cringe, nor cry out.

Thorin lunged for the one who beat her, but he was dragged down by half a dozen goblins, more coming to replace those he shook and threw off the platform. The last thing Dís heard was the beast of a king shouting, “Cut off his head!” before Thorin’s back was on the ground, a dagger was to his throat and the world stopped spinning.

The effect of that pronouncement upon her was indescribable. Dís stopped struggling. She stopped breathing. If the goblins who swarmed her and beat her sought to slice open her open with their jagged bone blades, they could have done so easily.

Then light, brighter than daylight, brighter than the heat of a thousand fires, brighter even than those innumerable pyres that burnt thousands of good dwarves to ash at Azanulbizar and _still_ woke her up at night with the brightness and heat of them rained down with a roar like lightning and a deafening silence.

The hands that held her fast fell away, the whip at her back disappeared and Dís found herself on the ground with no sense of where she was or what was happening. Blinking in the sudden darkness, she saw the tall, thin figure approaching them with sword and staff and for the first time in their journey, she was unfathomably grateful that her brother thought to have that damned wizard along.

“Take up arms,” Gandalf urged, as stern as any battlefield commander and Dís did not disdain him for telling her people to do what came naturally to them. “Fight. Fight!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys were so right, trying to make these scenes that are essentially movie re-writes readable is HARD, so it is with great relief that I tell you I probably only have another chapter or two to go before I more or less do my own thing. Do you know how much I want the dwarves to play some hobbity variation of 'Never Have I Ever' at Beorn's? SO BADLY. Oh, did you guess what I made Balin quote? Disney's _Mulan_! Because I am an unrepentant dork.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am freaking EXHAUSTED, I stayed up WAY too late writing this so I'd get it done tonight. (Big night planned tomorrow!) I am too sleepy to proofread, so please excuse my typos, they will not be fixed until Sunday at the earliest.

The dwarves scrambled to find their pilfered weapons or else hand them off to their fellows. Dís cared only to have Frerin’s sword back in her possession. The axe she threw to Kíli for it was heavier than his sword and could knock their enemy from the ill-made platforms and scaffolding they cobbled together from scraps and rotting wood. Her back ached, but the promise of revenge enlivened her blood and dulled the pain.

Their enemy was dazed, but far from defeated. That suited the dwarves perfectly well, now that they had their bearings. Though this too was a confusing melee under cover of darkness, this was a fight they stood a chance of winning - or at least escaping. Rather than the touch hides of trolls, their weapons could bite and rend the soft, pale flesh of the goblins. Now, when they swung their axes or stabbed their swords, they felt the give of skin and muscle as their foe fell at their feet, screaming senselessly in their pain. 

Dís cut her way through them, hot blood and bile glistening in the torchlight on the blade of her sword. Untested in true warfare she might have been, but she had killed before. Small bands of orcs would prey upon the mountain villages of the Blue Mountains, sending warg scouts to clear the path for them. She had no qualms about life-taking against such as those, indeed, the thrill of battle warmed her hands and livened her heart as it did any true dwarf.

Escape would be their victory. Had they an army, they could have driven the goblins from beneath the earth and seen them tear their eyes from their skulls in the sunlight or else driven their swords through their guts until the bodies were piled a fathom high and one could not walk without drenching their boots to the calf in blood. But they numbered only fourteen dwarves and this was not one of their mines. Perhaps it had been, generations ago when the world was young and Dwarves were the only true masters of the land beneath the earth, but any vestige of prior splendor was worn away by time or disfigured by crude goblin hands that knew not what beauty they destroyed.

It was not hardship to follow Gandalf, for if the wizard found a way in, he knew a way out. The bridges and walkways were rickety and threatened to snap as they creaked and swayed beneath the boots of the dwarves.

 _Not light footed,_ Dís thought idly to herself as she skewered a goblin clean through the stomach and used the corpse to throw another off-balance, shrieking to its death miles below. _Bilbo was right - Bilbo!_

There was not a moment to spare for the halfling. Dís had a difficult enough time keeping her kinsmen in her line of vision and keeping herself from harm. One goblin tried to put its sharp teeth through her vambraces, but she threw him away from her with a snarl; a half-rotted tooth remained embedded in the leather afterward. Surely had a hold of him. She would have to be satisfied with that hope until they reached the surface.

A dwarf’s sense of direction was much improved underground, but the labyrinth these creatures lived in would have been impossible to navigate without help so, while Dís followed Thorin’s shouts and commands, the entire group of them let the wizard take the lead with nary a grumble nor resentful thought.

Even she had to admit, the boulder was _inspired_.

One of the goblins managed to club her in the face as she ran and Dís stumbled back out of line. Bofur took hold of her arm and steadied her, urging her to run beside him. “Alright?” he asked as he smashed one of the wretch’s heads in with his mattock.

She grinned at him with bloody teeth. “Never better!” she chirruped, disemboweling another quite cheerfully.

The numbers of them had died off, they no longer came on so steadily to replace the fallen. Indeed, the path before the wizard seemed clear, until the walkway shook and splintered as the wood broke apart and the Goblin King burst in front of them like some nightmare creature from the depths.

The wizard proved his mettle at last. Dís could appreciate timely flashes of light and sparks, but she respected the glint of cold steel in torchlight above all. Gandalf’s sword in the Goblin King’s guts met with her approval in a way none of his former bluster managed to sway her. She had no time to voice any of this aloud, none of them had time to say anything before the weight of the massive goblin sent the whole unsteady platform plummeting downward.

As it had been on the mountainside, it was all any of them could do to hold on to one another. Kíli was closer to her than his brother, but Dís saw the back of Thorin’s coat and his strong left arm tight around her eldest son’s shoulders. She had her own around the waist of her youngest and if he tucked his head under her chin as they fell, she would never say a word about it later. There was a pressure on her back that sent a throb of pain washing over her, but the press of metal that had been warmed by flesh against the top of her hand was familiar and more comforting than the pressure against her was painful.

Turning her palm up, Dís laced her fingers with Dwalin’s tightly. There was a touch on the back of her head, firm, furtive and desperate. Absurdly, she found herself thinking of Rivendell and waterfalls, wishing that she’d turned around sooner or had the nerve to go chasing after him, bare, dripping and utterly ridiculous.

The narrow cavern was their savior, in the end. The crash was a hard one, but not so hard that they would suffer overmuch for it. The wizard was the first to scramble up from the rubble, Dís lay on her back, half pinned under her son and tried to catch her breath.

“Well, that could have been worse,” Bofur commented and Dís had half a mind to laugh - until the weighty corpse of the Goblin king sent her kinsmen crashing down on top of her. Rocks and wood dug into her back and her innards felt squished flat as she groaned and tried to shove Kíli off of her.

“You’ve got to be joking,” Dwalin griped, staggering to his feet and pulling Dís up from beneath her son before he went to aid Nori.

Dís got her hands beneath Kíli’s arms when she saw her son’s eyes widen in horror. “Gandalf!” he shouted and his mother looked up to see fifty score Goblins scuttling down the cliffside like so many pale spiders.

Despite their wounds and aching bodies, they ran for the light of the sun. Men might confuse their race, but dwarves could thrive in sunlight, though the preferred the comfort and protection of stone walls. The flesh of goblins was thin and papery, bruising easily and burning even more quickly. They cringed away and returned to the hole in the earth from which they’d sprung while the dwarves escaped out into the evening air, fresh and cool on their skin.

After so much time in near-darkness the light burned Dís’s eyes, but it was a temporary ache and one she welcomed. Gandalf was counting off the Company and she too made a quick inventory. Her brother. Her sons. Her cousins. The Ri brothers. Bifur, Bofur, Bombur.

“Where is Bilbo?” the wizard demanded, sounding angrier than Dís had ever heard him. “Where is our hobbit?”

“Curse the halfling!” Glóin shouted loudly enough to rouse the birds from their nests. Being winded, short on sleep and frustrated were not the best balm for his temper. “Now he’s lost?”

“I thought he was with Dori,” Óin said, giving the younger dwarf a searching look.

“Don’t blame me!” Dori protested, but his expression was nothing short of stricken. “I’m not his keeper!”

“Well, where did you last see him?” Gandalf asked them, looking heartily disgusted with the lot of them.

“Not since we were in that damned cave,” Dís recalled. She got one quick look at him before they fell. “He was standing near the mouth of it, he might not have fallen.”

“He did,” Bofur confirmed. “Right down with the lot of us.”

The Company exchanged nervous looks; the youngest lads looked downright heartbroken. If Bilbo had fallen, but not made it through the fight, then he was as good as dead. None would volunteer to return for him.

“I think I saw him slip away,” Nori offered, his voice almost too hopeful. “When they first collared us.”

“What happened exactly?” Gandalf asked, his eyebrows drawn down over those unfathomable blue eyes. “Tell me.”

Thorin sought to put an end to all the speculation. It was a cheery version of events he postulated, a warm hearth and soft bed for their halfling, rather than the reality of cruel goblins or a great fall onto unyielding rock. Though the dwarf’s voice was scornful, he did not announce Bilbo’s death to the group, Dís hardly knew why not for her brother was hardly given to flights of fancy. Perhaps he wanted to spare the lads. “We will not be seeing our hobbit again,” Thorin said, a note of finality in his voice. “He is long gone.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“By the Maker!” Dís swore when the little creature sneaked up on them, one hand going to her forehead. And there he was, a little battered and bruised perhaps, but alive, undoubtedly. Smiling at them a little sheepishly, coat torn, hair hopelessly matted and she thought he’d never looked better.

“Bilbo!” Kíli exclaimed, a delighted smile breaking out over his face. “We’d given you up!”

“How on earth did you get past the goblins?” Fíli wanted to know and his mother had just been about to voice the same question. Gandalf words of earlier about hobbits being light on their feet came back to her, but if they were _that_ quick and clever, he might have demonstrated such prowess beforehand! It would have saved Thorin a great deal of grumbling.

“How indeed?” Dwalin muttered, giving the halfling a very suspicious look. Bilbo had grown on him some, as he had most everyone in the company with the noted exception of Thorin. Even so, Dwalin could not for the life of him work out just _how_ he’d managed to follow them out of the caves without attracting the notice of a single creature, dwarf or goblin.

Bilbo’s only answer was nervous laughter which prompted a few of the others to look at him, puzzled.

“Well, what does it matter?” the wizard asked, without a care in the world, it seemed to Dís. “He’s back.”

“It matters,” Thorin said, giving Gandalf an incredulous look at his easy manner. “I want to know, why did you come back?”

It was a very different sort of question their king asked. ‘Why,’ rather than ‘how,’ but the latter was irrelevant to Thorin. Here was the hobbit and how he’d come to be there was not the most pressing issue on his mind. In spite of the danger, given the chance to return to his beloved home, he decided to throw caution to the wind and continue on with a group of near-strangers who turned up unannounced on his doorstep only a few weeks ago. Why, indeed?

The halfing’s response was truly touching. Honest. Simple. In a word: dwarvish. Better than flowery speeches or breast-beating pronouncements, Bilbo Baggins simply wanted to aid his new friends in any way he could because he felt it was the right thing to do. There was no higher vow a dwarf could make than to pledge loyalty to another. It bound folks together as kin, lovers, friends or even allies. Bilbo was not one of their race, but he good-hearted enough to throw his lot in with theirs and honorable enough not to go back on his word, even a word given on a whim, even after trolls and stone giants and goblin caves.

Dís found herself recalling Gandalf’s words the night they were all crammed around the halfling’s dining room table and she remembered finding him a weak, retiring, skittish thing.

_There’s a lot more to him than appearances suggest, and he’s got a great deal more to offer than any of you know._

She looked from the halfling to the wizard with a little half-smile on her face. It seemed she’d gotten the wrong measure of a few of them and she wasn’t too proud to admit that - to herself, at least.

No sooner had silence descended upon them that it was broken by a soul-shivering howl.

 _How?_ Dís wondered as they ran on legs that felt like lead, fueled by muscles that screamed and strained from overuse. _How_ had they been discovered? To Rivendell, over a mountain pass and beneath the earth and still they came?

They were being hunted, now there could be no doubt on the subject. But why? These were no marauding orcs looking to make sport or a meal of weary travellers. These attacks were deliberate and aimed at them. Dís’s mind shied away from the obvious. This was no simple hunt; this was a vendetta.

The wargs were running hard and fast down the mountain, the howls turned into snarls and grunts as they came closer and closer and soon they were upon them. Glóin and Dís dispatched one with sword and axe. They took to their feet and ran to rejoin their friends, but a cry of dismay from Nori soon alerted them to a serious problem in their retreat.

“The ground’s gone!” he said, not very intelligently, but he could hardly believe his eyes. “We’re trapped!”

The forest abruptly gave way to a cliff and a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. There was nothing else to do but take to the trees. As one of the taller members of the Company, Dís could grab hold of one of the lower branches without too much fuss, which bought her a few precious seconds to reassure herself that her sons were off the ground. Before she could make a move to join them, there was a hand looping around her belt and she was thrown skyward. Her arms reached out and took hold of a branch.

When she pulled herself up she found Thorin standing beneath her and she reached out a hand wordlessly to haul him into the tree. They were spindly things to her mind and the dwarves could only climb so high before the branches began to give under their weight. The situation seemed even more dire from their lofty position. The wargs circled below, claws tearing bark and jaws snapping up at them. They would wait and their masters could climb. This tactic seemed to have bought them just enough time to say goodbye to one another.

But there were no words for goodbyes. There was hardly a thought at all, for Dís looked upon a rocky outcropping on the horizon and thought, for just a moment, she had died and descended into a terrible underworld. For mounted on a white warg whose fur shone in the moonlight, was the same creature who haunted her brother’s sleep and gave herself fodder for her own nightmares.

The Pale Orc. Azog the Defiler. Who died almost a century ago at Azanulbizar, but had not remained buried. The Goblin King had not lied and her brother...she had never heard Thorin sound as he did now, when he spoke. As though all the fight and life had drained out of him.

For this was the one great right of his life. His one triumph that he could hold up during times of overwhelming tragedy and strain to think, _This I accomplished. This once I did what I needed to do and I was successful. So I may someday be again._

Yet the Pale Orc lived. Maimed, but not destroyed. In this moment something did die: The sense within Thorin Oakenshield that once in his life he had done something truly honorable, and done it to its end.

“It cannot be.” In that single whisper, Thorin ceased to be King Under the Mountain, the fierce warrior and proud dwarf. He was only a son and a grandson, mourning his forebears and grieved, deeply grieved, that he left them unavenged.

Those who fought in the War of Dwarves and Orcs knew some of the Black Speech of the Orcs. They heard the insult and the threats and could do _nothing_.

The wargs leapt and snarled, salivating jaws wet with wanting, eyes gleaming with bloodlust. It was all any of them could do to hang on and not be thrown from the trees with the force of the shaking. Dís sheathed her sword in fear of losing it, using both hands to cling to the branches, rough bark stinging her already scratched and bleeding hands as the trees were uprooted and they fell ever close to the precipice.

Like flustered birds they swung and clung to the only fir tree that remained to them and clustered together listening to the terrible grating laugh of the orc, like two steel sheets scraping against one another.

One thing could bend metal, one element that was as much a friend to Dwarves as the earth they mined: Fire.

Dís’s hands, made strong and tough in the forge scarcely felt the lick of the flames as she hurled pine cones down upon the heads of the wargs and set the forest floor ablaze. The warg’s howls turned to whines and even their master’s cruel faces went slack with fear as their mounts turned tail and ran.

Despite the heat rising up to greet them, triumphant laughter sounded all around them. Dís heard Kíli’s familiar voice rise to join the others in mirth - then cease, abruptly as he lost his grip and fell, along with Dori and Ori. She caught her son without realizing she had moved, one arm gripping her his arm as he clung to her with both hands, and the other desperately holding them both to the tree. She dug the heels of her boots in and would have pulled him up, but the tree gave another dreadful lurch and she nearly lost her grip and sent both of them plummeting to their deaths.

Twisting her head around to see if there was any closer who might be able to help, she looked up just in time to see her brother rise and confront the animal that killed their grandfather in single combat.

They had not slept in nearly two days together and not eaten in longer than that. They had faced down death on a mountainside, death in goblin caverns and now death upon a cliffside. They were tired and battle-weary. Dís hardly felt she had the strength in her limbs to keep herself and her son alive.

 _He’s going to lose,_ she thought, numb with horror. _He’s going to die._

The orc was mounted, Thorin was not. He was alone. He was _alone_. Just as she vowed to herself years ago she would never let him be. When he was first thrown to the ground, she felt her heart jump into her throat. When he took a blow to the chest, she felt the organ crack within her. When the warg took him in his mouth and she heard her screams of agony, she felt it shatter.

“Thorin!” Dís shouted, forgetting her precarious position and nearly losing hold of her son.

Dwalin tried desperately to reach him, but he almost killed himself with the effort, the branch he was holding giving way entirely. Fíli let out a choked cry that was more like a sob than anything when he saw his uncle’s lifeless body tossed aside, unmoving on the ground. When the Pale Orc demanded his head, she wanted to lunge forward, but Kíli’s fingers, damp with sweat and blood loosened on her arm ever so slightly and the branch she gripped bent more and more with each passing second..

Her son. Her brother. Would she have to sacrifice one to save the other? Was there time? Or was she doomed to outlive another who she loved, too far away and impotent to do anything to save them?

There was a savior for Thorin. But it was not his sister, nor any of his kin. Nor was it Fate, nothing divine took a hand in ensuring the dwarf’s survival. It was only a little hobbit, armed with an Elvish dagger inexpertly wielded and more courage than Dís thought it was possible for any creature to possess. The sight of him, defending her brother as bold and brave as any dwarf strengthened her resolve and she found herself scorning her question of a moment ago.

For she would not choose either her brother or her son. No, that would be a compromise. And she was tired of compromising.

“Brace yourself,” she ordered Kíli and flung him with all her strength to the solid, burning ground. He tucked and rolled and sprang to his feet, sword in hand. His brother followed a moment later, Dís and Dwalin hot on their heels.

_We live together or we die together. There is nothing else._

Their steel flashed in silver streaks under the light of the moon. Every hit landed was a battle won. Every drop of blood was a life taken. It might have been a losing battle, but if they were to die, they would die as dwarves, straight-backed, fighting with their arms in their hands.

Dís did not realize what was happening until the warg that bore down on her was lifted by huge clawed talons and dropped unceremoniously over the edge of the cliff. When she did look up, she hardly believed her eyes.

Eagles. Eagles the size of oliphants - bigger, even, great birds of prey with wingspans as wide as the ships of Men were circling, crying out into the night and coming so close the wind that stirred beneath their wings brushed her hair back from her head and made her eyes water. Vision blurred, she could only stare as her brother was taken up from the ground - gently, almost cradled in those claws - as the oaken branch which once saved his life fell to the ground like firewood carelessly dropped.

She had not the time to wonder where they were taken him before she was dropped herself onto the back of the creature that carried Thorin. Dís felt the rush of the wind and held fast to the thing’s feathers, twisting her head around to see that all her fellows were being taken up and carried away by the eagles while their enemy looked on, shouting their rage to the uncaring heavens.

The sun was rising over the mountains, but the daylight seemed cold and cheerless. Dís was grateful for the aid, even though she didn’t understand how or why it had come, but she could not see her brother and did not know if he lived or...

When they came to rest upon a stony eyot, she leaped from the eagle’s back and felt her landing reverberate all the way through the bones in her legs, but ignored the pain. She would take it all, hers and her brother’s if he lived. But he was still and unmoving, even as she fell to her knees and gathered his head in her lap, moving his hair away from his face with shaking hands.

Gandalf approached, shouting his name, but he did not rise or even open his eyes. Dís looked up at the wizard who she until so recently scored and only begged him, “Please. _Please._ ” Tears welled in her eyes and she could speak no more than that.

The wizard met her eyes for an instant and understanding passed between the two of them. He nodded and knelt beside them as Dís looked on with anxious eyes and a hammering heart. Muttering words in an unknown tongue, Gandalf passed a hand over Thorin’s face and his eyes fluttered open at last.

Thorin squinted in the light of dawn, having utterly lost his bearings. One of his hands briefly touched his sister’s where it rested on his brow, but his eyes darted about as though he was looking for something. “The halfling?”

“It’s alright,” Gandalf assured him. “Bilbo is here. He’s quite safe.”

Along with the rest of the Company. Dís looked up and saw everyone gathered around them, torn and tattered, but on their feet. Silently, she prayed a brief orison that this day, the Maker was merciful to His children. Already Thorin was struggling to his feet, throwing off Dwalin and Kíli who rushed forward to aid him. Dís accepted Dwalin’s hand under her arm and let him tug her to her feet, eyes never leaving Thorin who, though well enough for bellowing, still seemed on the verge of collapse.

Had he not looked so poorly, Dís might have run forward and hit him for speaking so harshly to their hobbit who saved his life. Had he not seen him come forward, first into the fray? How could he not commend such bravery?

When he opened his arms and _embraced_ their Bilbo, she fell forward, bracing her hands on her knees and laughed, though there was more air than sound that issued forth. “Unbelievable,” she said and Dwalin’s hand was on her back as he regarded Thorin with an expression of fond exasperation. “I was about to knock his teeth in.”

“Aye, I was about to let you,” he said and the two of them were laughing, the entire Company was laughing - some were cheering, which only made the others laugh harder.

The eagles took their leave them, soaring away, the merest lines on the horizon in scant seconds. “What was all _that_ , then?” Bofur asked Dís, smiling so hard she was sure his cheeks must be sore.

“I haven’t any idea!” she declared, throwing her hands up. “I’ve decided to keep my mouth shut and be grateful!”

“What did Gandalf _do_?” Fíli asked, half joy, half anxiety. “I thought...”

“I’m not asking any questions today!” Dís declared, moving closer to her sons and throwing her arms over their shoulders, kissing each of them upon the head. “I’m too tired.”

The halfling’s words made them turn, then stare, open-mouthed. The older dwarves in the company had to strain and squint, but those younger and those blessed with long vision saw the tall, proud shape rising up into the sky easily and took it it with wide eyes and baited breath.

Dís’s hands tightened on her sons’ shoulders and their arms went around her waist as one. It was the closest to the Mountain she had been in over a hundred years. It was the first time they had ever seen it.

“ _Oh_ ,” Kíli breathed. Fíli seemed too thunderstruck to make a sound.

“Erebor,” Gandalf announced. “The Lonely Mountain. The last of the great Dwarf Kingdoms of Middle-earth.”

And surely that was how it would be written of in the histories. The great mountain city of Erebor, whose mines ran with veins of gold and gems as wide as rivers, whose every corridor was alive with the carvings of some great master and whose outer walls stood for Ages after their construction. But to the dwarves whose misty eyes beheld the outline of the Mountain, Gandalf’s words meant little. It was Thorin who spoke to their hearts when he said, “Our home.”

“A raven,” Óin declared. “The birds are returning to the Mountain.”

“ _That_ , my dear Óin,” Gandalf corrected, “is a thrush.”

_Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks._

She was not the only one to recall the map’s words. “Well, we’ll take it as a sign,” Thorin said softly. Dís heard the smile in his voice as he added, “A good omen.”

“You’re right,” Bilbo said wonderingly. “I do believe the worst is behind us.”

And after how wretched the last few days had been, Dís could well believe it too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for the film, kids! After this it's into the wild of Tolkien canon and my own weird imagination. I'm looking forward to it, I hope you are too!


	24. Chapter 24

The good eagles carried them so far from the orcs that there was time enough at last to rest - once Óin had given all of them a proper looking over, which was his first order of business. Thorin might have been King, but Óin was the Company’s healer and as such reserved the right to respectfully tell his Majesty to shove his royal dictates in a very private place if they interfered with his work.

Thorin, though standing under his own power, was little able to do much beyond that and after the beating he took was Óin’s first patient for the day. “As none of you likely lads - nor lassie - seem to be on the verge of death, I’ll take the worst wounded first,” he announced, removing Thorin’s fur and coat without waiting for his permission.

Thorin opened his mouth, obviously about to protest, but Balin and Dwalin moved up on either side of him, took an arm and urged him to _sit down_. “Surely there are others - ” he began, but Dwalin shook his head.

“There aren’t,” he said sternly, folding his arms over his chest and daring Thorin to attempt to rise from the ground on his watch. “Be still.”

Dís inclined her head and whispered in her sons’ ears, “Keep a close eye on your uncle for me, lads. If he tries to get up - sit on him.”

Fíli and Kíli grinned and nodded, taking a seat on either side of Thorin and keeping him well occupied. “How long, d’you reckon, ‘til we reach the Mountian?” Fíli asked, thus keeping his uncle occupied enough with chatter that Óin could examine his wounds without too many protestations from Thorin.

Most of their supplies, save their weapons and a few traveling packs, were lost in the goblin caves. In the confusion, they took what was close at hand as they fled. Their largest cooking pot was gone, but Bombur had a smaller pot which Óin requested to be filled with water for boiling so he could wash out their wounds. Nori declared himself in fit shape to fetch some and Dís volunteered to go with him; she little wanted to leave her brother behind, but she was not a creature made for idling about and worrying. It would improve her spirits and Thorin’s health if she actively took part in speeding the healing process along.

The Carrock was high, but easy enough for a nimble dwarf to climb down without too much difficulty. It would have been easier still if Dís’s arms weren’t aching from holding so tight to that tree and her son, but she ignored the burn in her muscles as well as the sharp pain in her back where she was pulling wounds open as she moved.

“Getting slow, namad,” Nori called slyly, a few feet below her.

“Come up here and say that to my face,” she said, feeling the sweat bead down on her forehead and drip into her eyes. “And don’t come crying to me when you slip in your eagerness to show me up and break your neck, nadadith.”

He was not her brother, of course, but a fourth or fifth degree cousin, she could not remember which, Dís did not have a good memory for those facts as Balin did. They’d grown up together on the road and because of that, Dís found she would always think on Nori kindly, even when he was going out of his way to drive his kindred out of their minds with anger and worry over him. The first time he disappeared from the Blue Mountains for months and came back after languishing in a gaol cell, Dori wouldn’t speak to him.

Oh, he let him in the house, their mother wouldn’t have it any other way, but the pointed silence was more trying and grating than his lectures on good behavior. Nori fled to Dís’s home after only a day or two. She was expecting Fíli at the time and Nori seemed nearly as shocked to see her with child as she was to see him at all. They stared at one another over the threshold before she finally smiled and took him in her arms with a murmured, _Nadadith, what trouble have you gotten yourself into?_

 _I might ask the same of you_ , he replied cheekily. Dís punched him on the arm, they both laughed and ever since then Nori knew that no matter how long he’d been gone or what he’d done, Dís would never turn him away. She might hit him or shout at him or throw her hands up at the heavens and declare that she didn’t know what there was to _do_ with him, but she’d never ignore him.

“We’re a lucky lot, eh?” he mused as they walked toward a nearby stream. “All in one piece after everything.”

“I’ll keep my thoughts on our luck ‘til we’ve reached the Mountain,” Dís said. She was still very much shaken by the events of the previous night and the thought that the Pale Orc was out there, still desirous of her brother’s head made her shudder. “But we’re still here. Whether we’re in one piece or not could be argued - want me to do your hair up simpler? Only you look like a canary that’s survived a cave-in.”

Nori reached up and felt his half-undone hair frowning. “I’ll do it myself later. Shouldn’t be too hard to manage if we avoid goblins and stone bloody giants. Who’d have thought, eh? Just when you thought you’d seen everything.”

“Love, I never assume I’ve seen _half_ of what there is in the world, stone giants least of all. I can’t make a guarantee we won’t see giants nor goblins, but I’ll try to keep Glóin’s hands from getting round your throat,” she vowed with a teasing smile, ducking as Nori took a swipe at her. “Might help a bit it you stopped having a go at Hervor for more than ten minutes together.”

“Hervor can take it,” Nori remarked carelessly. “Even if her husband’s _sensitive_. No great quality in a dwarf, must drive her mad.”

“Nah,” Dís shook her head, kneeling by the stream and lowering the small pewter cauldron into the clear water. “She reckons it’s sweet, it’s why she married him.”

“She ought to have come,” Nori said suddenly, fixing Dís with a piercing look that surprised her. Usually Nori wasn’t half so sentimental “You did. Why didn’t she? Don’t tell me she was nervy, then it’ll be _your_ throat Glóin’s fingers’ll itch for.”

“She’s got a lad at home to take care of,” Dís said. “Mine are grown and would have gone away without me if I hadn’t dug my heels in and insisted on ruining their fun.”

Nori looked confused. “Gimli, you mean? Isn’t he of age?”

“He’s sixty-two, of course he’s not.” The younger dwarf opened his mouth to retort, but Dís shut it with a look. “Don’t you say a word. I have a very strong memory of taking you up in my arms and running you to Óin’s at that age, wailing and half insensible after doing something mind-numbingly stupid. I don’t recall what exactly it was you did, but I do remember it was _completely_ mad.”

“I’ve done worse since,” Nori reassured her, grinning. “With better results, I’m proud to say. And I think ‘insensible’ is overstating it, rather.”

“Really?” Dís asked, quirking an eyebrow at him. “Because you _begged_ me to sing you to sleep.”

“Hardly insensible,” Nori pointed out. “Just the opposite, in fact, you’ve got a very soothing voice, I’d not say no to hearing it right now.”

“Your head’s in once piece right now,” she shook her head as they hauled the pot out of the water together, but Nori seemed perfectly content to let Dís carry it back, which didn’t surprise her in the slightest. There was no reason Nori would want to keep hold of the pot of water, it wasn’t worth anything. “If anyone gets the right to request a song of me, it’s Thorin today. Or else Bilbo, for being so valiant.”

“You’re awfully choosey about who you’ll sing for,” he observed with an exaggerated sigh. “And what’s that about stupidity? Hobbit practically throws himself into the mouth of a warg, you call it bravery, I try to make a bit of coin on the side, I’m stupid?”

“You’re deeply stupid,” Dís nodded. Nori’s acts of idiocy were conducted primarily for his own gain, while Bilbo’s recklessness saved her brother’s life. It was a very great difference, to her mind, the line that separated foolishness and valor.

Nori was frowning now; evidently she’d insulted him. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Aye,” she nodded. “And I’m happy to have you, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t an idiot.” Grinning at him, she nudged his side and added, “Don’t take it too much to heart. Some of those I love best are idiots.”

Nori snorted, “Aye, that’s a fact. ‘Least I can read.”

The words were out before Nori’s instincts could tell him that was one of the _worst_ things he could have possibly said to her. His mouth was truly out of his own control at times and it got him in terrible trouble more times than he cared to reflect on. If it wasn’t for the fact that Óin needed the water she carried to heal the wounded, Nori had no doubt that Dís would have cracked him over the head with the full pot of it and left him there on the ground, self-proclaimed sister or no. Dragon-tongued, he was, his speech was forked and barbed for cutting right to the heart of a person’s troubles and wounding them deep. It was no secret that Dwalin and Dís were mad about each other, only out of politeness no one mentioned it. Running with a bad crowd made Nori forget his manners.

“I’m sorry,” he said hastily, reading the murder in her expression. “I am, truly! You said it yourself, I’m an idiot. I admit it. And _you_ just admitted you loved me!”

“Love you, sure,” she growled, turning away from him and trudging up the Carrock, holding the handle of the pot so tightly, he wouldn’t be surprised if there were dents in the shame of her fingertips on the metal by the time they rejoined the others. “I just don’t _like_ you some of the time.”

They made the rest of the journey in silence, Glóin had a fire lit and Óin was going over the supplies that remained to him, tearing a bag that had been torn in the goblin caves into strips for bandages. Thorin’s armor had protected his body from the worst of the warg’s bite, but she could see cuts and abrasions purpling his chest and back. Meeting his eyes briefly, she smiled in a manner she hoped looked reassuring and busied herself with putting the cauldron on the fire. They set the pot to boiling and Dís sat down on an obliging rock, closing her eyes briefly. How long had it been since any of them slept?

A warm form sat down close beside her and her eyes flew open, but she relaxed when she realized it was only Bofur. “What, you don’t mean you’re tired, do you?” he joked, bumping her shoulder with his.

“Maybe a little,” she shrugged, grimacing a bit in pain. That little hike with Nori hadn’t done her any favors. Bofur looked at her with concern, but she just sighed a little and leaned her head on his shoulder. Lowborn, but companions of a higher quality could not be found from the Blue Mountains to Erebor, Dís was sure of that. She and Bofur became fast friends after Víli got it in his head to get to know his new neighbors - get to know _her_ specifically, but with the result that she gained half a score new friends almost overnight. For a young dwarfling who’d known more of scorn than hospitality in her life, it was a welcome thing.

“Bombur makes a better pillow,” Bofur said, but made no move to shake her off. “Want me to fetch him?”

“Nah,” Dís said, eyes closing again. “You’ll do.”

Bofur put an arm around her shoulders and leaned his head atop hers. After a moment, the sweet, smoky smell of tobacco filled the air; he must have found some obliging soul to share his pipeweed. Evidently, Dís dozed off because the next thing she was sensible of was Óin’s voice in her ear saying, “Come along, lass, let’s have a look.”

“Mmm?” she muttered, blinking blearily up at him. Bofur was still right beside her, but the pipe was gone. Just how long had she dozed off?

Her sons were sitting by her rather than their uncle and Kíli smiled at her, patting her knee and saying, “Best do as he says. Don’t make us sit on _you_ , Mam.”

“I suppose I could do with some seeing to,” she admitted, removing her outer layers, armor and finally pulling her tunic and underthings down so that she was bare to the waist. Bilbo, modestly borne of being Shire-raised, looked away, but he lifted his eyes when Kili gasped aloud.

Pretensions of modesty fell by the wayside, her front was easily overlooked when her back came into view, criss-crossed as it was with purple and black bruises. Occasionally a welt bled sluggishly from where fabric clung to a clotting wound.

“That bad, eh?” Dís asked with a crooked smile. Óin ordered her to set her coat down and lay atop it while he prepared a poultice and she obeyed, sweeping her hair to one side so he could see as he worked. Thorin was at her side in an instant, himself half covered in bandages. “Before you say anything, I want it known that you look worse.”

“You haven’t seen yourself,” he replied grimly.

“Nor have you seen yourself,” she shot back, resting her head on her folded arms. “I’ll lay down good coin that of the two of us - ”

“You both look like shite and that’s the end of it,” Dwalin sat heavily on the ground, sounding fed up with both of them. “Hopeless, the pair of you.”

“Well, that’s why you’re around, to supply for our deficiencies,” Dís complimented him prettily, but Dwalin was in no mood for flattery. He looked nearly as sullen as Thorin did, which surprised her, them being so soon out of danger, however temporarily. Speaking of danger, that reminded her. “Where’s Mister Baggins gone?”

“Right here,” he said, crouching down before her. Heedless of Óin’s protestations, Dís propped herself up on her elbows and grabbed Bilbo by his much-abused waistcoat, pulling him in for a kiss on the cheek and a knock on the forehead, taking care to be gentle so she didn’t crack his skull. “I owe you a life-debt,” she swore bluntly and the hobbit blushed right to the top of his ears.

“Oh no,” he started to demur, but she cut him off.

“I don’t know how it is among Shire folk, but if a body saves someone dear to us, we consider ourselves in their debt,” she told him seriously. After a moment’s pause, not wanting to seem rude, Bilbo nodded uncertainly.

“Ah...” he trailed off, unsure what the appropriate response to such a thing was. “I do...I do hope I’ll never have a reason to collect it.”

Dís smiled and nodded, laying back down properly when Óin gave her a hard jab in the back of the head. “Let’s hope,” she agreed, turning her head to the side, but she did not close her eyes to rest. From where she lay, she could still see the hazy line of Erebor in the distance. It seemed further away now than it did when they first spied it on the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nori, Nori, Nori, what's to be _done_ with you? For anyone who wants more details on what exactly happened in Nori's sixty-second year that caused Dís to carry him (bridal-style, no word of a lie) to the infirmary, check out Chapter 9 of _Durin's Day Eve_. For further bb!Dís and even bbier!Nori shenanigans, _Nadadith_ explains the origins of their pseudo-sibling relationship.


	25. Chapter 25

Óin insisted on personally treating everyone in the Company - those who protested that they needed his ministrations least got the most thorough examinations. Bofur was picking through what remained of their rations since his brother’s hands were heavily bandaged. Bifur was giving him a stern lecture in iglishmek about the risk inherent in catching a sword by the blade.

“Not good?” Dori asked Bofur, noting the frown that caused his mustache to droop below his chin.

“Bit not good,” he confirmed. “We’ve enough dried meat to make fifteen very meager portions. And I’d lay good money down that no one’s in a fit state to hunt as yet - if there’s any beasts to be had about.”

Gandalf, who was the only individual assembled who had not been subjected to Óin’s keen eyes and skilled hands, rose from the rock he was seated upon, nodding to himself. “What we require is food and lodgings,” he said. Dori’s lips thinned and he seemed to be warring with himself not to roll his eyes in exasperation.

Of _course_ they needed food and lodgings, but the wizard might as well comment that they needed fresh clothing and new mounts and, oh, ten-score armies to slay the dragon. If he could not lessen a downpour with his magic, he certainly could not conjure any of that from the air.

As though he was reading the dwarf’s mind, he continued, “We have no food, little baggage and no ponies to ride.” Crouching down, Gandalf squinted over the edge of the rock and spoke to himself, but his voice was clear enough that the Company heard his words. “We are some miles... _north_ of the path which we should have been following. Very few people live in these parts.”

The wizard lapsed into silence and the dwarves looked at one another mystified. Little did they desire to go begging for they had no friends to call upon - and who would offer them hospitality if they did? Bilbo’s cozy little smial was the last place any of the dwarves encountered a true host, as they saw it. Plenty of food, plenty of meat and they weren’t sleeping half exposed on some Elvish porch of dubious safety.

Gandalf’s hat bobbed as he nodded to himself decisively. “I shall return,” he declared, causing Bilbo to startle from where Óin was cleaning and wrapping his bloody knuckles.

“You’re leaving?” the halfing asked. “ _Again?_ ”

“Only for a short while,” the wizard reassured him. “There is somebody I know of who lives not far away - or once he did. If he does still, then we will be treated to softer beds than these rocks.”

It was with an expression of open dismay that Bilbo (along with several company members) watched the wizard disappear over the edge of the Carrock. No one said a word, but they were suddenly reminded that the last two times Gandalf left them, they came very close to be eaten and tortured to death, in that order. None wanted to contemplate what might befall them upon this third abandonment.

And so, they did what dwarves were wont to do when thoughtful contemplation proved too burdensome to indulge in: they went to work.

“Right,” Dori said, clapping his hands briskly. “I’m not eating meat that’s as dry and tough as old leather if I can help it, not if it’s to sustain me until the _next_ horrible happening...happens.” Casting his eyes over the Company, they settled on Thorin and he asked, just barely maintaining a respectful tone, “Permission to assemble a hunting party comprised of the _least_ battered of us?”

“Granted,” Thorin said. He would have risen to join Dori too, but Dwalin and Dís reached out and grabbed hold of one side of his coat, effectively pinning him to the ground. Wise enough to know that fighting them would only make the situation worse, he remained where he was, frowning and ordering, “Stay close.”

“I’ll go!” Kíli sprang to his feet, bow in hand. Fíli didn’t say a word, but he got up all the same. It was taken as a given that where one of the brothers went, the other was sure to follow.

“And me!” Ori volunteered, scrambling upright. Dori seemed about to protest, but Nori, threw an arm around his younger brother’s shoulders and said he was feeling up to it as well.

“Sure you are,” Dís said, peering up at him from where she still lay on the ground. “Since you let me take the trouble of carrying the pail all by my lonesome.” She winked then and Nori knew all was forgiven between them.

“I was just along to be good company,” he insisted, grinning back. “I’m the entertainment, s’all in my contract.”

Bofur laughed. “Are you? You’ve been making a piss-poor show of it, young Nori! When you lot return, I want to see some dancing!”

“Come along with us and I’ll dance a merry jig,” Nori said, grinning at Bofur - he was always eager to have as many bodies apply to a task as possible to ensure he’d do the least amount of work.

“I’ll come along,” Glóin hauled himself up off the ground, squinting at his hunting knife in the sunlight. “You’ll need someone to keep the lads in line.”

“We’ve been on a few hunts before,” Fíli reminded him somewhat petulantly, annoyed that after all they’d been through, they were still half treated as children.

“Wasn’t talking about you, laddie,” Glóin clarified, mouth twitching in a smile as he gestured to Bofur and Nori. “If brains were tinder they’d not have enough between ‘em to rub together and make a spark.”

Nori looked startled. “Was that a joke?” he asked Bofur, his voice all astonishment. “Did Glóin just make a _joke_?”

The braver of the two, Bofur rushed forward and made a big show of looking at Glóin’s head for wounds. “Did you hit your head?” he asked worriedly. “Mayhap you’d better have a lie-down, ‘fore you start seeing things.”

Glóin batted Bofur’s hands away and shook his head, muttering under his breath about how his son was more grown-up by _half_ than either of them.

 _Take_ , Bifur signed, tossing his boar spear at Glóin. His dealings with the Orcs put him off hunting, but he would not begrudge the others their right to feed the Company.

“You’ve got a knowledge of plants, Master Hobbit?” Óin asked Bilbo as he finished tying off his bandages.

Bilbo nodded affirmatively. “I do, I might not have the greenest thumb in the Shire, but I get by.”

The expression ‘green thumb’ was meaningless to Óin, but he was not about to enter into a conversation about halfling idioms. “If Bifur’s willing, are you well enough to come with me to gather some plants? Between reckless kinsfolk and clumsy goblin’s, my stock’s looking scanty.”

Bifur looked doubtfully at Bombur, who raised his bandaged hands in a shooing motion. “Go on,” he urged his cousin. Full grown he was, with a brood all his own, but Bifur had never gotten over seeing him as the baby of the family. “I’m fine and I won’t be no better for your staring at me.”

Thus divided, the Company went about their tasks, either gathering herbs or venturing out in hopes of catching a few rabbits to skin. With his hands thickly bound and clumsy, Bombur made himself useful taking an inventory of those few supplies they had left while Balin occupied himself cleaning their weapons, one eye on his brother, Dís and Thorin.

Dís was once more lying with her hands on her arms, eyes closed, evidently asleep. Thorin was watching her closely with a look of deepest melancholy on his face. Dwalin stirred restlessly beside him and Thorin’s attention was diverted. “You’re not going on the hunt,” he observed.

“Nah,” Dwalin shook his head and cursed under his breath, removing the remains of his pipe from a breast pocket. The smoking instrument had been the sole casualty of the Goblin mines, the stem was cracked in half, probably when the Goblin King fell on them all. Damned shame; he rather liked that pipe.

Thorin noted the damage impassively, his face growing hard as stone. “I would rather be alone,” he muttered softly, eyes fixed on the horizon, toward the hazy line of Erebor in the distance. So _close_ , this was closer than he had been to his home in a century yet never had Thorin felt more far away and unworthy than he did now.

“Mmm,” Dwalin hummed absently, trying to fit the stem back together. It was no good, it had splintered too much and anyway, there wasn’t time nor tools enough to mend it. “That’s too bad.”

 _I could order you_ , was on the tip of Thorin’s tongue, but he did not have breath enough to speak the words. Always he felt Dwalin was his equal in all but name. Brothers in bond, if not in blood, but every once in a while, when he was feeling truly dreadful and low, he would call upon his rank to command his friend and kinsman to do his bidding. Usually it involved instructing Dwalin to stay away, but though Thorin phrased it as an order, he always felt more like he was pleading than anything else.

In battle, Dwalin was obedient, ever the loyal warrior. In other matters, matters of the heart, for instance, he was no less loyal, but he showed his mettle in a different manner. Thorin was a good king and a better friend, he looked after his people and kinfolk well, but if he had one glaring failing, it was the fact that he was utterly incapable of seeing to his own well-being half so thoroughly as he saw to his subjects’.

If ever a dwarf could be said to be stubborn, it was Thorin. Oh, Balin thought they were well matched for tenacity, but Dwalin would argue that Thorin was far ahead of him in terms of sheer bullheadedness. Came of being raised as he was, neither of his parents were much for shows of feeling or talking out things that troubled them. Following their instruction, Thorin just let all his hurts and cares sit tight within him, like black bile in his heart and guts and just like that dark humor, it would wreak its havoc and do him all sorts of harm in the end.

Dwalin wasn’t stubborn, not really, not where Thorin was concerned. He was patient. He’d wait as long as it took before his friend and king decided to unburden himself.

Tearing his eyes away from the tantalizing glimpse of their homeland, Thorin diverted his attention to the edge of the cliff face, where their companions had disappeared. “If any of them left now,” he began, but Dwalin spoke over him, momentarily drowning him out.

“That’s - ” but Thorin pressed on mulishly, his eyes going dark with melancholy.

“I was going to say, if any of them left now, I wouldn’t curse ‘em for cowards.”

“And _I_ was going to say that’s unworthy,” Dwalin countered, folding his arms and piercing Thorin with a look that bordered on stern. “Of you and of them. I understand you’re - ”

“You understand _nothing_ ,” Thorin snarled. Balin looked up sharply and he lowered his voice, half turning away from Dwalin. “I have failed, utterly. How can I ask them to follow me into the maw of a dragon if I - who they call _king_ \- cannot claim the one victory that made me so?”

One hand came up to rest against his brow while his fingers rubbed his eyes irritably. Thorin was not weeping, he was too full of grief to weep. Behind his closed eyelids he saw the killing fields again, saw his grandfather’s head raised high above, dripping blood, his noble brow cut crudely with knives and rather than taking his revenge, Thorin saw himself impotently waving a sword around, like a gnat who thought it could fell a bear. Was that not what Balin said in his stories? Was that not the dwarf the Company was contracted out to?

If he was not Thorin Oakenshield, slayer of the Pale Orc, who was he? And what were they all doing out there in the wilderness?

“Right, I’ve had just about enough of that.” Next to them, Dís abruptly rose, propping herself up on her elbow. It was clear she hadn’t been asleep for a moment. “Why is it you think we stay with you?” she asked Thorin, fixing him with a piercing stare. “Answer true, now.”

Thorin did not hesitate. “Because I’m your king and kinsman,” he spoke the words like a sigh and did not remove his face from his hand.

Dwalin and Dís exchanged a bewildered glance. 

“Wrong,” Dwalin shook his head, then snorted. “Near two hundred years I’ve been by your side and you haven’t got the measure of me yet?” He tsked, for all the world as if Thorin was a forty-year-old student who forgot his training weapons in his room.

“He did take an awfully bad beating,” Dís pointed out, surveying Thorin frankly. Despite the pain she rose and sat on her brother’s other side. “I’ll forgive you being a little addled. You are our king and kinsman, true, but you’re mad if you think that’s why we’re here.”

“Why then?” he asked, bitterly.

“Because we love you,” his sister replied simply, her voice all fond exasperation. “And I’m willing to wager - _willing_ , not able, I lost all my coin miles back - that if you put the same question to anyone in this Company, that’s the answer you’d get.”

Blowing out a breath through her nostrils when Thorin _still_ would not look at her, Dís pressed on. “For home, for glory, for duty, aye, there’s that too, but we haven’t survived a century and a half of exile living off _duty._ My sons, Ori - _Gimli_ , even - they don’t know Erebor. It’s a story to them. You know those lads, they’d be as happy in a hovel as a castle so long as they had friends and family enough about to cheer the place. They’re here - we’re all of us here not because it’s our duty to follow you, but because it’s an honor to do so. The Mountain never had a worthier king, nadad.”

“A crownless king,” Thorin said dully, for all the world as if he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. “A king without a kingdom whose reputation, meagre though it was, lies trampled in the dust.”

“You didn’t become King because of your battle with Azog.”

It was only then that Thorin lowered his hand from his face. When he raised his head, he saw Balin standing over him. His face was solemn and his eyes, though sad, also shone with a fierce inner light.

“When your father disappeared and you filled his place,” he explained, patiently, as though he was teaching a lesson, “young as you were and grieved as you were, when you led our people to safety and settlement at long last, _that_ made you king. More than any crown or throne in this world or the next. I’ve told you before laddie, you have done well by us. The Pale Orc is nothing to that.”

All in all, the words of kinfolk, no matter how beloved, were no cure to his wounded pride and heartsickness. They were a cautery, sealing away the worst of the damage, but the ugly mark remained, plain enough to see for all who care to look. For the moment, though, it would have to do.

 _Enough to be going on with_ , as his sister would say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little short, perhaps, and heavy on the FEELS, but we're coming up on Beorn's house which will be funtimes! I'm going to a cabin in the woods (sounds like the beginning of a horror movie, eh?) for the weekend, so I probably won't be updating anything while I'm away. Allegedly the place has WiFi, so if I go out of my mind with boredom and/or find myself inspired by nature (which I probably won't, I'm a dwarf at heart, I don't do 'outside' if I can help it) maybe I'll come up with a drabble about how much roughing it is the worst ;-)


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm _heavily_ borrowing from Tolkien for some of Gandalf and most of Beorn's dialogue, I hope JRR will forgive me.

The hunting party returned with a few fat rabbits to add to a soup stretched to feed the Company with the herbs and vegetation that Óin was not putting to use in his healing potions. Gandalf returned as the sun was slipping down low on the horizon, casting the world in a cozy orange glow. He seemed quite satisfied and spoke to them of a Somebody, an acquaintance of his who might be willing to give them food and lodging for a few days’ time - if they followed certain rules.

“You must all be very polite when I introduce you,” Gandalf commanded them imperiously. All of a sudden Dís remembered why she disliked him for so much of the journey. There was no need to speak to them like they were unmannerly dwarflings who ate with their weapons on the table - granted, they _had_ done just that at Rivendell, but turnabout was fair play, was it not? If this Somebody, this skin-changer did not accord them proper hospitality, why should they play the part of good guests?

“I shall introduce you slowly,” the wizard continued, ignoring the frowns of the Company as cheerfully as he had for most of the journey thus far. “Two by two, I think. You _must_ be careful not to annoy him or heaven knows what will happen. He can be appalling when he is angry.”

Nori snorted, unimpressed, “So can we.”

“Couldn’t you find someone more easy-tempered?” Dori complained. He was trying to repair his coat with what little thread remained in his sewing kit and was quite at the end of his rope. “If he’s so likely to be vexed, I wonder why you think he’d take us in at all. Skin-changer; indeed. Faery stories!”

“He is kind enough, if humored,” the wizard clarified, leaning heavily on his staff, weary of tiresome explanations to tedious dwarves. “His name is Beorn and _is_ a skin-changer, Master Dwarf. Sometimes he is a huge black bear. One of the last of his kind, descended of the great and ancient bears of the mountains or else the first Men who lived even before the time of dragons. I cannot say, in truth and he is not the sort one asks questions of.”

“No questions, no provoking his ire, be _polite_ ,” Glóin groused loudly, but not at all for his brother’s sake. “I expect good meat and mead in the offering, if I’m to sit still and keep my tongue in my head throughout.”

“Ah,” Gandalf said and there was a trace of awkwardness in his manner as he smoothed his beard and leaned more heavily against his staff. “I knew there was another point that would interest you...he keeps a great many animals - I say keeps, he lives among a great many animals, but he does not eat them and you would do well to clean your hunting knives before you approach him.”

This time, none of the dwarves showed any restraint. Rabbit meat was pitiful when ranked against chicken, beef, boar or venison. Even fish or eel could fill a belly better than rabbit and though none would say so for fear of insulting Bombur, they were still hungry after their paltry meal.

“Do you mean to starve us ere we reach the Mountain?” Dís demanded, squinting up at the wizard who was silhouetted against the blood red sky. “Dwarves can’t live on greens, wizard.”

“Neither does he, my lady,” Gandalf replied, all politeness, but Dís’s mouth remained twisted in a frown regardless. “He lives on rich cream, fat berries and _honey_. He keeps bees, you see, hives and hives of them.”

That got everyone’s attention quickly. Dwarves could quaff ale like drinking water and tuck away kegs of beer as easily as breathing, but when they had the coin and the chance, none could resist a tall mug of thick honey-mead. Dwarves had a universal language and there were many universal customs among the seven clans, but another common trait shared by the vast majority of dwarrow-kind was a universal sweet-tooth.

“Does he distill it, at all?” Balin asked in a would-be-curious voice.

“That he does, my dear Balin,” Gandalf smiled broadly, almost smugly. “Barrels and barrels.”

“What are we waiting for?” Kíli asked, taking up his quiver and bow, shoving his knives into his boots haphazardly. “Let’s go! Night’s nearly upon us and if he’s so ornery, he probably doesn’t take well to visitors after dark, eh?”

“A wise observation, young Kíli!” the wizard nodded, evidently satisfied that the dwarves were finally seeing things his way. “The sooner we set off the sooner we might beg hospitality from him - remember, two by two, and keep your wits about you.”

The Company were mostly recovered from their ordeal, but they climbed down from the rocky outcropping slowly. Not because their wounds troubled them especially, but because they knew this was the last glimpse at Erebor any of them would have until they stood at the very foot of the mountain.

Thorin, unsurprisingly, lingered the longest. The sun was setting behind him and the mountain was a mere shadow, untold miles away. In the light and at that distance, it looked more like a ghost of a memory than a destination.

Fíli touched his arm and gently tugged his vambrace, like a dwarfling whose parent lingered too long at a market stall after promising their darling a treat. “Thorin?” he asked softly. Then, “Uncle?”

It would not do to gaze into the past; whatever the future held, he had to journey onward. “Skin-changers and Elfkind,” he said, walking in step with his nephew. “I think you’ve seen more of the world on your first venture out of the Blue Mountains than I did in nearly fifty years of wandering, m’lad.”

Grinning, Fíli bumped his Uncle gently upon his uninjured shoulder. “Well, that’s fair, isn’t it? Since we’re to stop wandering for good, once this quest is over. We’re going home.”

Dís’s words were at the forefront of his mind as he looked at his eldest nephew and heir, _They don’t know Erebor. It’s a story to them._

Leaving the only home they’d ever known, peace and prosperity, as Balin would have it, all for a story. No. Not for a story. For _him_.

Thorin put an arm around Fíli and held the boy in a half-embrace as they trudged down the Carrock to join their fellows. “Home, indeed,” he agreed. One of Fíli’s arms went tight around his uncle’s waist and Thorin felt him tremble even through his armor. How afraid he must have been all this time, but he never showed it. Neither he nor Kíli, nor little Ori. What brave boys they were. How honored he was that they should follow him.

Speaking of the other little idiot, Kíli doubled back from where he had been walking alongside Dís to fall in on Thorin’s otherside, looping his arm around his uncle exactly as his brother had done. “Mam says we ought to keep an eye on you,” he announced, unable to hide his cheeky grin for long. “If you need to be carried, I’ll take your legs.”

“Not fair!” Fíli groaned. “He’s top-heavy!”

“Just so,” Kíli nodded, holding his head high. “And I’ll take his blade!”

“If I’ve got his shoulders, _I_ should get the blade for my troubles!”

“Nah, you’ll be too busy trying not to drop him - ”

“Do you know,” Thorin interrupted them conversationally. “I was just about to tell you how proud I was of you two?”

The brothers stopped their merry argument at once. Kíli’s mouth dropped open, then turned up again in a genuinely happy smile. Fíli’s face looked much the same. Thorin did not speak highly of them nearly often enough, he knew, but he did try to tell them how he loved them and how proud they made him when he could. Another of his father’s lessons better taken to heart in the breaching than the following.

“ _Was_ ,” he said, shaking his head and squinting ahead where Dís and Dwalin were waiting for them to catch up. “But the moment’s passed now. Let’s get a move on so your mother doesn’t worry.”

“Did I miss some sweet scene just now?” she asked when they reached the tail end of their marching party.

“Uncle said he was proud of us,” Kíli announced, looking more pleased with himself than he had been when he hit his first target with his bow.

“Then he changed his mind again,” Fíli finished, shrugging, but positively beaming with happiness.

Dwalin chuckled and their mother laughed so hard it came out through her nose as a snort. “Did he?” she asked, smiling at Thorin as broadly and genuinely as her sons. “That is sweet. I’d say I’m proud as well, but you lads knew that. And that I love you with all my heart, but you knew that too.”

“More than the stars and the moon?” Kíli asked, slipping away from Thorin and exchanging his uncle’s arm around his shoulders for his mother’s.

“Remember _that_ , do you?” she asked, delighted. “Oh aye, of course!”

“And the jewels of the earth?” Fíli added, not to be outdone, tucking himself firmly against her other side.

“Aye - ”

“And the snows of the mountains?” Thorin was just tall enough that with a little stretching and some obliging slouching on Dís’s part, he could rest his chin atop his sister’s head.

“I’m surrounded!” she exclaimed. “I suppose I should surrender. _Aye._ I love each and every one of you wonderful idiots more than the stars and the moon and jewels and snow and - ”

Dwalin was walking a half-step in front of her, thick arms hanging idly at his sides. Dís reached out and took one of his hands, tugging him around to stand in front of her. “And the light of the sun,” she concluded, staring right up into his warm brown eyes.

From further ahead, someone whistled for their attention. “Come along, slowcoaches!” Nori shouted at them from further up in the crowd. “We’re burning daylight! And who was the dwarfling who wanted to get there ‘fore dark?”

It was a bit of a to-do getting _into_ Beorn’s house and once they gained entry, none of the dwarves were particularly sure they wanted to stay and suffer this strange creature’s particular brand of hospitality. Their host himself was unlike any they had ever seen before, like a Man in shape, but taller than any of that race the Company had ever encountered. The tallest among their number, save Gandalf, hardly came up to his waist and the wizard could only be described as being of a height with the near-giant due to the point on his hat. Hairy as a dwarf he was, dressed in simple wool garments, but with possessed of something wild lurking behind his black eyes that was native to neither the race of Men nor Dwarves.

Speaking of which, the skin-changer openly declared that he had no great love of Dwarves, but once Gandalf informed him that they had come to his porch after a run-in with goblins, he was much less suspicious of them. Indeed, once he was treated to an abridged version of their adventure so far (retold from sixteen different voices all speaking over one another), he laughed hard enough to shake the rafters of his home and bade them all come inside.

“A very good tale!” he announced, waving them inside with one sweep of his massive arm. “The best I have heard for a long while. If all beggars could tell such a good one, they might find me kinder.”

Dís stomped on Thorin’s foot. The toe-caps on his boots prevented her heel from actually doing him damage, but the message was clear. _Better beggars at the feast than left starving outside the gates._

“You may be making it all up, of course,” he added, still chortling as he closed the door behind them. “But you deserve a supper for the story all the same. Let’s have something to eat!”

And despite being called beggars, despite finding themselves the guests of an unknown creature, despite the danger behind them and that which surely lay ahead, each and every member of the Company bowed their thanks at the offer and meant it sincerely.

Beorn’s hall was built to accommodate a being of his size and stature. Bilbo had to be given a leg up onto the bench around his high table and the shortest of the dwarves found it a struggle to seat themselves with anything resembling dignity. This time they abandoned their weapons in the doorway. Beorn eyed their collection of swords, daggers, knives, axes and bows without comment; even if he would hunt no animal, it seemed hunting goblins was acceptable sport to him.

The fact that there was no meat on the table did not put the Company off their dinners in the slightest - though the menagerie which lay the table certainly raised a few eyebrows. Too hungry and grateful to question the remarkable animals Beorn referred to as brothers, they tucked into hearty oatcakes, bowls of barley-thickened stew, cups of cream with the sweetest, juiciest assortment of fruits and berries such as they had not seen since the market stalls of the Blue Mountains yielded the jewel-bright produce last summer. By the time they had eaten their fill, Fíli’s mustache was stained pink with juice and Ori had so many strawberry seeds between his teeth that Dori despaired of him ever being rid of them.

Between bites, they kept their odd host entertained with stories, which he seemed to enjoy. The dwarves spoke of their travels - Beorn seemed less interested in hearing about their mining and metal work, so they spent as little time on shop-talk as they could, while Bilbo supplied stories of Shire life, which made their host merry indeed. The dwarves found they had as little interest in hobbit genealogy - so _many_ children to keep track of! - as Beorn had in their crafts, but the skin-changer heard all with a smile and another of his great, booming laughs.

“Such a gay world you hail from, little bunny!” he announced, heaving himself out of his chair and standing on those impossibly long legs. It was a wonder his head did not brush the ceiling. “And I would hear more of it - but not tonight. Tonight I roam, but if you would call me friend, you will not.”

“And why’s that?” Dwalin asked, eyes flickering to the doorway where their abandoned arms caught the firelight.

Beorn only threw his shaggy black head back and laughed again. “Take only my word for it, as I am honest: Stray not farther than the porch this night, at your peril. Farewell, my fine beggars! Eat, drink, sleep and be well until the coming of the dawn!”

Bilbo yawned hugely and would have been content to tuck himself into bed and settle down for a well-deserved slumber, but the dwarves had different ideas. Feasting was never immediately followed by sleeping, even a queer feast of cream and oats. Fully half of them had lost their pipes in the goblin caves and more still lost what little instruments they carried with them into the wild when the ponies bolted.

It promised to be a very dull evening given that they could roam no further than Beorn’s porch, but dwarves were unaccustomed to dull affairs and so quickly conspired to make merry in one of the few capacities available to them. Gandalf, in the brief interim, tottered off to the porch with his own, miraculously intact, pipe.

“Drinking game!” Bofur declared before the wizard’s robe had finished crossing the doorjamb. A general roar of approval sounded all around. The mead, as promised, filled barrels and barrels and though the dwarves were not shy about taking what was offered, they had yet to make a serious dent in Beorn’s stores. “What’ll it be?”

“Not Drink ‘til You Puke,” Glóin insisted, holding up a hand that would not brook any argument. “Not if I’m to be sharing a bed with one of you sorry sods tonight.”

“Oh, but that one’s _easy_ ,” Kíli groaned, rising up on his knees on the bench to lean across the table and plead his case. “There’s only the one rule!”

“Do Hobbits have drinking games, Bilbo?” Bombur asked their burglar curiously. He was one of the few members of the Company who listened attentively during the halfling’s tales of home and kin. Maybe it wasn’t a place he’d settle, but Bombur wouldn’t say no to paying another visit to the Shire.

“Oh yes,” Bilbo nodded eagerly. “Quite a few. Some played with cards.”

“We don’t play cards with Nori,” Balin informed him, pleasantly. “Not after last time.”

“What d’you mean, not after last time?” Nori asked indignantly.

“Last time we played cards with you we were nearly eaten by trolls,” Bombur explained, reasonably, he thought.

“That was nothing to do with me!”

“Better safe than sorry,” the cook shrugged apologetically.

“There is one, fairly easy, called ‘Never Ever,’” Bilbo went on. “How it works is you say something you’ve never done before, such as ‘Never ever have I traveled further from the Shire than Bree’ - erm, only I couldn’t say that because I have done. Let me think...oh! Never ever have I trained my tomatoes to grow up a trellis! That’s something I certainly haven’t done, and if you have done it, you take a drink. If you haven’t, then you don’t drink.”

The dwarves looked around at one another, puzzled. “What if you’ve never grown tomatoes?” Ori asked curiously.

“Well, then you wouldn’t drink,” Bilbo replied slowly, not sure if Ori was quite sincere or not. When he detected nothing in the young dwarf’s face but honest curiosity, he continued. “If you’ve never grown tomatoes you’ve certainly never tried to train them to grow up a trellis.”

“Do you have to say, ‘never ever’ each time?” Fíli asked. “If you forget, does it not count?”

Dwarves could be quite detail-oriented when it came to the terms of engagement. This was the reason Kíli was so keen on playing a nice simple drinking game without a lot of fuss about tomatoes and phrasing.

At least one of their number, however, was happy to throw custom to the wind if it meant getting to the grog that much faster.

“Never ever have I bedded a woman,” Dís began, putting an end to the nonsense at once. She wanted to get blindingly drunk and that was not a state easily reached when her fellows insisted on going over semantics.

“Is that including women of Men or - ” Ori began, but Dori interrupted him with a significant look.

“Don’t see it applies much to you either way,” he said, eying Ori’s hands clasped around his tankard. “Does it?”

“Ori, if you’ve bedded a Woman of Man and not told us, we’re going to have to stop the game so’s we can have the story,” Fíli insisted and Nori hooted his approval.

“We’re not,” Glóin retorted, putting an end to the matter, which was for the best as Ori was turning so red he was practically purple. “I for one aim to get at least half in my cups and there’s slim chance of that happening if Ori’s story-telling.” Then, assigning himself the next turn, fixed his eyes on Dís and said, “Never ever have I bedded a man - Dwarrow, Elf, Man or otherwise.”

“Otherwise?” his brother asked. “D’you mean to imply that one of this lot might’ve tupped an Orc?”

“You’ve got a filthy mind,” Dís declared, but she paid her forfeit and took her drink cheerfully.

Bifur also drank during the forfeit, provoking Bofur’s mouth to drop open in surprise as he very nearly stood on the bench to give his cousin’s shoulder a squeeze. “You old _charmer_ \- ” he began, but Bifur shook his head.

“You’re not playing?” Bofur interpreted correctly for Bifur nodded. “Whyever not? It’s the most fun we’ll be having tonight.

His only response was to set his mug down, and hold his hands before his chest, thumbs pointed upward, as his right hand turned in a quick circle, almost frantically.

“Danger?” Bofur repeated aloud, settling back down on his haunches on the bench. “Come on now, a Hobbit drinking game?”

 _Danger_ , Bifur signed again, taking up his cup and drinking down another leisurely sip.

“To be fair,” Bilbo said, cheeks gone _very_ pink. “The, erm, declarations are not generally those of such an - ah - _sensitive_ nature - ”

“What’s sensitive?” Dís asked, confused. “I’ve two lads grown, how d’you reckon they got here?”

“In His Celestial forge the Maker took up his hammer and chisel and there brought forth from the rock Fíli and Kíli and so delivered them to the doorstep of our Lady Dís,” Bofur intoned with great solemnity until he grinned and shattered the whole illusion. “‘Least that’s how _Thorin_ reckons it went off!”

The Company laughed and Thorin cracked a smile, though he shook his head. “As I was in the birthing room, I know that’s not how it went off,” he replied, taking a drink.

“And you do no credit to his sister to say so,” Óin announced, lookin more annoyed than the situation really warranted, but after decades of little dwarflings being told _that_ old yarn from parents who spent too much time among Men to remember to speak frankly about such matters, he was tired of hearing it.

“Ah, Óin, he was only joking,” Dís smoothed over. They’d had too much of upset for Óin to get into a strop over a jest.

“I wish he _would_ ,” the old dwarf grumbled. “If he had a pipe ‘twixt his lips, it’d stop him spewing nonsense.”

“ _Joking_ , not _smoking_ ,” Dwalin shouted across the table.

“What?”

“Never ever have I been given a talking-to by Dori,” Bombur supplied quickly. His little diversion worked and he, grinned broadly as more than half the table groaned and made to drink.

“Are we taking a dram for _each_ lecture?” Nori asked, looking down at his tankard doubtfully. “‘Cos I don’t think there’s enough grog in the _world_ for that.”

Bilbo was looking at Thorin, who tilted his mug back and dutifully swallowed a mouthful of mead. “ _You_ , er...”

“At least once,” the confirmed, nodding at the halfling. It was the second civil thing he’d said to him their entire journey. “You know it’s a talking-to and not just talking when he gets his finger out.”

Kíli nodded and mimicked the movement. “It’s like this,” he demonstrated, winding his arm back and pitching it forward, right index finger pointing directly at Bilbo’s nose in a somewhat threatening manner.

“That’s not it at all!” Fíli shook his head. “You’ve got to get the face right.” He threw his own arm forward, finger out and turned his mouth down in a frown, eyebrows drawn to a point over his nose.

“You both forgot to say ‘now see here,’” Ori added, just as Dori, slammed his elbow on the tabletop, pointed at both brothers and said, “Now see here!”

This time it was the laughter of a Company of fourteen dwarves and one hobbit that set the rafters to shaking. The game continued for a while, some around the table (Nori, for instance) succumbing to drink much faster than others (Bombur, whose conduct in life until this point had been all but irreproachable).

As the moon rose higher and its silver light painted itself across Beorn’s hall, Bofur revealed that his pipe had survived after all and would anyone care for a spot of music? Maybe dancing?

The scrape of the bench as the entire Company scrambled to its feet, pushing the table back against the wall to clear a space was all the answer he required.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I would get them good and drunk and by golly we are WELL on our way, folks! Even if the Durins insisted on having FEELINGS first. The party will continue in the next installment, stay tuned!
> 
> And just in case this sticks in anyone's craw - I'm sorry about the heterocentrism of the drinking game, I just honestly haven't given a great deal of thought to most of the dwarves' sexualities. I tend to default to ace where dwarves are concerned and I didn't want to throw anything out there as a one-liner without giving it due consideration. Which would probably result in backstory and its own little side story because that's just how I roll.


	27. Chapter 27

The combination of safe lodgings, decent food and copious spirits put the Company in a better mood than any of them had enjoyed since departing from West Farthing. Their burglar seemed more at ease in their company than ever and after a bit of prodding and pleading from Fíli, Kíli, Ori and Bofur, Bilbo actually agreed to favor the dwarves with a Shire song.

“It’s about damned time!” Fíli declared triumphantly. “We’ve been singing ourselves hoarse to make the hours pass and I say you owe us one.”

It would be impolite for Bilbo to reply that some dwarf songs were so far out of the realm of good taste that he personally would have preferred silence to singing at times so he said nothing about it. At this point, the halfling felt he’d heard the full gamut of dwarven musical expression, from the mournful dirge they sang the last night in his smial, the cheerful working songs with a steady beat that were hummed as they crafted, to the bawdiest ditties that ever reddened a Hobbit’s ears. Naturally these were sung at full volume as they rode until the dwarves were laughing too hard to carry on without falling of their saddles.

“I suppose I do,” Bilbo admitted and the youngest dwarves hooted and hollered their approval. “Just a quick one - _very_ quick.”

Bilbo Baggins thought himself a hobbit of modest accomplishment - even saving the King Under the Mountain from certain death did not puff his ego up too immeasurably. No matter how handy he became with a sword, it would do nothing to improve his voice, which, as far as voices went, had never been remarked up as particularly fine. Nevertheless, there were a few songs he knew that did not require a nightingale’s talent to render well and so he chose the first one that came to mind.

“It was Merry Boffin-Took and Gamgee and me  
And a couple or two or three went on a spree one day.

We had a bob or two which we knew how to blew  
And the beer and whiskey flew and we all felt gay!”

Their burglar’s previous episode of mountain sickness might have been a trick, some of the dwarves thought as the hobbit filled his lungs with enough air to rattle off the words of the song one right after the other without pausing for breath. Unsurprisingly, the song was about a large dinner enjoyed by the above-mentioned hobbits and the dramatic fall-out when they refused to settle their bill.

Not the most exciting of songs, but the speed at which the lyrics flew from the hobbit’s mouth to their ears was astonishing and by the end even Thorin applauded the effort. Bilbo made a little half-bow, but shook his head when the dwarves begged him for another. “Let me catch my breath,” he pleaded.

“Dancing in the meantime!” Bofur declared, brandishing his pipe over his head like a sword.

Bilbo had never participated in a dwarven dance before and so demurred the request to join their gaiety for he was still slightly winded and did not know the steps.

“Easy enough to learn,” Kíli reassured him with his usual infectious grin. “Come along, it’ll be fun! Another thing to cross off your list of never-dones, now you’ll have to drink when some kin of yours says, ‘Never ever have I danced with a dwarf!’”

The image of the look of shocked disapproval that would twist Cousin Lobelia’s pert little mouth at the pronouncement made Bilbo laugh, but once again he shook his head. “Next time, maybe.”

“Mightn’t be a next time,” Nori said sagely, slapping Bilbo heartily on the back, but not so heartily that he broke anything. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die!” He knocked back the rest of his mug of mead and partnered with Kíli in Bilbo’s stead.

The younger dwarf laughed. “Are you playing at being Mister Balin?” he asked slyly.

Balin merely raised one eyebrow and smiled indulgently. His pipe was good enough to smoke and so he begged off dancing in favor of relaxing. “If he is it’s a poor mumming. You’ve got the phrase wrong, laddie.”

“Come along, you sour old schoolmasters!” Dís knocked her shoulder against Nori’s impatiently. “Come on, little brother, either lift up your boots or sit it out and talk posy with Balin and as for _you_ ,” she folded her arms and gave Bilbo a _very_ severe look. “I’ll give you ‘til you reach the bottom of that mug, Master Hobbit, then I’m giving you a dancing lesson!”

Never had an invitation to dance sounded more like a threat, but Dís, though awfully similar to her brother in mien, had none of Thorin’s dark demeanor. The faint lines around her mouth and eyes were creased from smiling and her blue eyes did not flash with anger but sparkled with mirth. Bilbo.

“I’ve a ways to go yet, Mistress Dwarf,” he replied almost apologetically, but deeply thankful that Beorn’s crockery was nearly as his arm from wrist to elbow.

“Just so,” Dwalin’s booming, growling voice sounding above his head made the the halfling look up in alarm, but the warrior’s eyes were likewise crinkled in mirth and he seemed to be smiling beneath his beard. It was a look Bilbo recognized, the same fond expression that Dwalin wore when he greeted his brother in Bag End. “Awfully rude to change partners in the midst of a dance, lass. Very unmannerly.”

One of his hands held Dís’s arm firmly in its grip and she turned toward Dwalin, their chests flush, her arms flung around his neck. “Aww, you’re nothing but a bunch of...pedants, the lot of you,” she rose up on her toes so that they were nearly nose-to-nose.

“Pedants?” Both of Dwalin’s dark eyebrows rose and his voice took on a note of sarcasm. “That’s a seven-pence word! Where’d you come by that one?”

The two jogged off to rejoin the dancing, arguing happily all the while. As Bilbo watched them, he was relieved he refused Kíli and decided to drink very slowly to stave off Dís’s return. There was something of a jig or a reel to the general pattern of the dance, but where Hobbits hopped, Dwarves stomped. Where Hobbits swung round, Dwarves flung. It seemed, at times, less a dance and more a contest among the Company to see how much abuse they could take before someone fell or bowed out due to injuries.

Bilbo’s eyes were drawn again and again to Dís and Dwalin. Unsurprisingly, for so energetic and violent a dance, they seemed to be the best pair on the floor. Their surety and ease with one another was clear and whenever the two linked arms or came close together their smiles grew so wide that Bilbo found himself regarding them fondly as well. Ah, so this was another similarity between Dwarves and Hobbits.

A heavy personage dropped down on the bench beside Bilbo; Bofur had given his flute to Bifur for the time being and quenched his thirst with a long swallow from the mug he plucked out of Bilbo’s hands.

“Much obliged,” he winked thankfully and Bilbo nodded back. Still at least a quarter full. If he took leisurely sips it might last him until they tired of dancing - truly, the Company had not had a full night’s sleep in days, how long could they maintain this level of enthusiasm?

Bofur followed Bilbo’s gaze and he sighed dramatically, slumping down on the bench so low that his feet brushed the floor. “ _That_ ,” he said, in a conspiratorial whisper, “is a story ninety years in the telling.”

“Mind your business,” Balin spoke mildly around the bit of his pipe. “Óin was right, if your mouth doesn’t have wholesome occupation, you’re liable to spew the worst nonsense.”

“Nonsense?” Bofur asked innocently. “Me? Never!” Lowering his voice even further he continued to Bilbo, “Want to talk about nonsense? _Them_ two have got to be the _thickest_ \- ”

Drink slowed Bofur’s reflexes to the point that Thorin, who was passing, managed to snatch his hat from off his head and whallop him soundly with it. “Leave off,” he ordered Bofur, sounding as stern and commanding as he had when he led the retreat from the Orcs. “It’s not your place to go meddling.”

“It’s someone’s place!” Bofur insisted, plucking his hat out of Thorin’s fingers and replacing it upon his head back-to-front. “Me and Master Meddle are old chums. Don’t know of no better time to do a bit of meddling. I’ll take it up as a third craft, open up a shop and have it carved over the door: Bofur, son of Balur, late of the Blue Mountains: Miner, Toy-Maker and Meddler Extraordinary.”

Thorin looked distinctly unimpressed. “How much have you had to drink?” he asked wryly.

“Not near as much as I ought to have done,” the miner replied, lifting his chin up as high as it should go. “Nor have you - come along, you heard young Nori.”

“They day I take advice from young Nori is the day I cut my hair, shave my beard and live among Men,” Thorin replied flatly, but Bofur was so pleased to hear their leader make an actual joke that he laughed aloud and did not miss the smirk that tugged at Thorin’s lips in response.

“Oh, what’s that, then?” Dwalin bellowed, returning to the table for another drink. “Careful with those, the way you hand out smiles, a body’d reckon you’ve got a limited supply and your stores are running low.”

“What’s that supposed to be, wit?” Thorin asked, punching Dwalin hard on the arm, a blow the taller dwarf returned gladly.

“Aye, though it’s no surprise _you_ need help spotting it, you grumpy bastard.”

This was another thing Bilbo did not quite understand about Dwarves. In the Shire, one could say perfectly innocuous things and mean them as insults, but Dwarves paid one another casual insults and roared with laughter. Dwalin looked fondly upon Thorin as Thorin looked on him, they were still laughing when Dwalin got Thorin in a headlock and was flipped over his shoulder onto the floor. When the two started an impromptu wrestling match, the other dwarves grinned ear to ear, as though they were witnessing the tenderest demonstration of love and affection they had ever seen. Nori didn’t even call out for bets to be taken.

“Good for Thorin to unwind a bit,” Bofur nodded, satisfied.

Balin smiled and nodded his agreement. “First word of sense you’ve spoken all night, lad,” he said with a wink.

Beaming, Bofur called to his brother, “Bombur! D’you hear? Balin says I’ve talked sense!”

“Well done, brother!”

Dís stepped around the fighting pair on the floor and climbed atop the bench to sit upon the table, so that she could reach her tankard more easily. “Sometimes folks surprise you,” she commented, taking a long drought from her mug. “If the moon’s in the right spot or the stars are shining just so, our lovely Bofur speaks sense.”

With a smug smile, Bofur leaned his head back against one of Dís’s dangling legs and agreed. “True. Not very often, but when all’s right in the heavens, I’m a feckin’ philosopher.”

“Add that to your sign,” Thorin said as he and Dwalin rose from the floor, tired of their ructions. One of the cuts on his lip had opened up and was bleeding slowly, but he paid it no mind, a tribute to the legendary hardiness of the race of Mahal. “Miner, Toy-Maker, Meddler and Fecking Philosopher.”

“I’ll run out o’room,” Bofur protested. “‘Sides, I don’t have none o’me letters, someone else’d have to do it.”

“Catla could try her hand at it,” Kíli pointed out, referencing Bombur’s eldest daughter who showed a keen interested in letter-learning and was educated up with Ori and the young princes by Balin who required nothing in the way of payment and said it was compensation enough to have such an eager student. “Cat’s brilliant.”

“Aye, she is that,” Bombur called proudly from down the table. Not as vocal about his children as Glóin was about Gimli, but he was just as doting a father to every one of the little mites. “Got to have one in the family!”

Snorting Dís looked around at her assembled kinfolk and joked, “We’re in dire straits, then, we haven’t had one sharp mind amongst us since Balin - hey!” She cried indignantly when Thorin smacked her knee. “What? Lost in the Shire! Twice!” She held two fingers up before her brother’s face for emphasis.

“You were with me the whole time, lass!”

“Didn't say _I_ was brilliant, did I?” Dís replied, throwing her hands up and it looked like the two were going to be the next to have a tussle on the floor, but Dwalin stepped in and played the diplomat.

“You have your moments,” he said, refilling his mug and swallowing the mead down almost as fast as he’d poured it. “Just moments, mind - and that’s been the way of it long as I can remember, for the sad sorry lot of you - here now, d’you remember when Frerin took those Men for fools, in Dunland?”

Thorin’s peevish expression melted into a look of wistful fondness. “Ah, how could I forget?” he asked, helping himself to more drink. “Damned presumptuous they were. Bolder than was good for ‘em. But they learned.”

“Do we know this story?” Kili asked eagerly, thumping the bottom of his mug against the table like a child of twenty. “Story! Story! Story!”

Fili and Ori joined him in the chant grinning and raising their voices until Dis waved her arms for quiet and declared that she could hardly give them a story if they insisted on _shrieking_ at her like starving wolf pups.

“ _Story. Story. Story,_ ” they whispered tapping their mugs lightly against the tabletop.

“That’s much more like it,” she said, satisfied. “Very well, we’d been on the road for a good few decades, I remember it was winter and we’d set up shop in a village of Men who’d not spent much time around Dwarves. They had no knowledge of our customs nor the quality of our work and, naturally, paid us insult because of it. That they didn’t know they were insulting us didn’t take much of the sting out, mind.”

There were knowing nods and general grunts of dismay; not a soul sat around the table whose skills had not been undervalued by an ignorant Man in their wanderings.

“How did they insult you?” the hobbit asked curiously.

“They wanted to _haggle_ ,” Dis explained, spitting the word like it left a foul taste in her mouth. Bilbo seemed bewildered by the venom in her voice, both of his pale eyebrows rose and he paused in his drinking, absurdly huge tankard frozen halfway to his lips.

“Don’t know how many dealings you’ve had with dwarrow peddlers, Bilbo,” Nori interjected, “but our lot never haggle if we can help it.”

“Well, why should we?” Dori asked rhetorically. “We know the value of our work and ask no more than it’s worth.”

“You’ll get no argument from me!” his brother replied, raising his hands up as if to ward off a blow, though none came. “Fair’s fair, eh? Only that’s why Men - and some Hobbits, I imagine - reckon we’re cheap, we quote ‘em a price and expect they’ll pay it, not talk us down and down ‘til we throw in the shirts off our backs to make it worth their while.”

Snorting into his tankard Dwalin added, “As if a Man could out-stubborn a Dwarf.”

“We’d been on the road long enough to know that was the way of things with Men,” Dis admitted, continuing her tale. “Didn’t mean we had to like it. Anyway, I was only just apprenticing, I was scarce allowed to touch a hammer, let alone change money. I couldn’t say a word about it - and Thorin’s got his jaws snapped up so tight with ire he can’t hardly respond, to say nothing our our dear Dwalin, but _Frerin_ looks at ‘em and just _grins_ like an idiot.”

“He was an idiot,” Dwalin agreed, “but that time he was a _shrewd_ idiot. One thing you’ve got to know, if you’re to know anything at all about Frerin it's this: He might’ve been a nuisance, but I’ve never known anyone more sweet-tempered. It took more gall and raging to rankle him than it takes water and wind to carve a path through rock.”

“He could look at all the wickedness in the world and laugh in its face,” Balin agreed, smiling fondly.

“Aye, aye, and he was the worst piper you’ve ever heard and he kicked in his sleep,” Dis added, wiping traces of mead from her mouth with her sleeve. “Where was I? Right, so, we’re in the forge - we being myself, Thorin, Dwalin - glaring at ‘em with murder in our eyes, but Frerin just walks to the counter, cordial as can be with that smile on his face and he says...” but by then she was laughing too hard to finish.

“He says, ‘You can pay for our work or you can pay for our beer,’” Thorin supplied for her. The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile as he added, “They chose to pay for our beer and came to rue the day they made that bargain. The next time we came through that village they paid what we asked up front, as quoted, not a penny less.”

Bifur paid the tale all due attention and when the general laughter of his fellows died down, raised his glass and said, “Frerin.”

Thirteen strong hands thumped on the table and every mug was lifted in toast. “To Frerin,” they intoned and drank deeply.

Dís leapt off the table and landed on the floor with a thump. “I’m recovered,” she announced, watching Bofur flail and nearly fall off the bench when he lost his head-rest. “How’s that mug looking, Bilbo?”

“Still a half-full, I’m afraid,” he apologized, unconsciously holding it a bit closer to him just in case the dwarrowdam got it in her head to check.

She seemed satisfied with his answer and anyway, Kíli jumped up to dance with her and so Bofur took up his pipe again and the antic flailing and stomping and throwing began again, even more riotous than it had been the first time Bilbo watched. All the spinning about was making him feel slightly queasy, so he cast his eyes about for something still and steady to settle on - and to his alarm the first thing he saw that suited his needs was Thorin, watching his sister and her son with a look of kindly, but intense concentration.

When he felt Bilbo’s eyes upon him, Thorin turned to regard the hobbit in turn, but rather than rebuking him with some harsh comment or starting away with an exasperated grunt that seemed to indicate that there was something in the lines of the burglar’s face that offended him, he tipped half the contents of his mug into Bilbo’s.

“She’s stubborn, but give her a few more rounds and she’ll forget her offer,” Thorin said by way of explanation.

Bilbo immediately started stammering his excuses. “Oh, no, it isn’t that I don’t want to dance with your sister,” he began, reminded uncomfortably of an evening not too many years ago when a certain Miss Cotton could not wrap her head around the idea that when Bilbo said he was not in the mood to dance with anyone, he did not mean anyone except her. Her elder brother was _most_ offended on the young lady’s behalf, but Thorin did not seem about to punch him in the eye for it. Which was welcome, but altogether unexpected. Bilbo thought dwarves would be as aggressive in the matter of dancing partners as they were in...well, everything, really.

“If you’d rather not, you’d rather not,” the King Under the Mountain shrugged. Balin took his leave of them, then, for Óin wanted to have a turn at his pipe and thought he was well deserving of it. “Takes more grog than this to get me on the floor. Or a direct order from my sister - you’re bolder than I when it comes to refusing her.”

The hobbit could not help it, he laughed and to his great surprise, Thorin did not appear to take any insult from that either. “You, ah, don’t care for dancing?” he asked and it was upon hearing this most innocuous of questions that Thorin’s brow grew heavy and his mouth tightened.

“Not anymore.”

“Oh.” It was an odd little truce that had sprung up between them, a happy consequence, Bilbo supposed, of saving someone’s life. Not that he would qualify his actions as such, the _eagles_ saved them, truly, he just...bought them a bit of time. Nothing more grand than that.

Good breeding dictated that one did not run off in the middle of a conversation, however stilted, so Bilbo whet his lips and spoke again, trying to settle on something that might be safe and he remembered the name, the mention of which cracked Thorin’s noble brow and made him smile. “Who’s, ah, Frerin, then?”

“My younger brother,” Thorin replied steadily, eyes once again on the dancing. Fíli and Nori were on their feet as well, changing partners with Dís and Kíli faster than blinking. Drink made all of them clumsy and it wasn’t long before the brothers tripped over each other’s feet and sent everyone crashing to the floor like nine-pins.

The revelation that Thorin had another sibling made Bilbo’s eyebrows arch toward his hairline, disappearing under his curly fringe - he was in rather dire need of a haircut, which was a strange thing to cross his mind just now and so he banished the thought.

“Your brother? But why is he not - ” Bilbo began, then realized what the answer must be. Looking at the motley crew around him comprised of brothers, cousins, friends, nephews and sons, he knew there was one reason and one reason only why a brother of Dís and Thorin would not have joined them in their tremendous undertaking.

“He fell in the battle at the gates of Moria,” Thorin replied and his voice was so low and gravelly, his face so set and still that Bilbo could well believe the legends that dwarves were made from head to toe of the rocks of the earth.

“I’m sorry,” Bilbo replied, his voice all sincerity. “He sounds quite...remarkable.”

It was not quite the appropriate response among dwarrow-kind, especially when one knew a dwarf fell in battle. If Bilbo was a dwarf, he would have asked long long he fought, how many he killed, what glory was his in his falling. But he was a hobbit and hobbits were not creatures who found glory in war, only sorrow. And ‘remarkable’ was the highest compliment Bilbo could think to bestow upon a fellow creature.

All of Thorin’s glory had been cast off when he saw the ghost - nay, not ghost, flesh and blood creature - atop its hideous mount in the twilight. There was only sorrow for him now when he remembered the battle. Perhaps that was all there ever had been, he reflected, heart heavy as his sister caught his eye and her face went from careless mirth to concern. All this time he had been grieving and merely presented a facade of valor to the world.

“Thank you,” he said to the halfling simply. “He was.”

An instant later Dís was in her brother’s lap. “You look sour,” she observed bluntly. “Bilbo refused you a dance as well?”

“He has,” Thorin replied gravely, but he seemed less melancholy now.

Heaving a sigh that would rival one of Dori’s on his worst days, Dís declared. “Well, there’s nothing to be done about it! Come along, drink up, drown your sorrows! Then maybe you’ll favor me - ah!”

Thorin picked her up and set her on her feet. “For you, I’ll dance sober,” he said, drawing an arm around her and giving her a kiss on the top of the head.

Bofur piped and played and Nori stomped and drummed out a beat on the tabletop until his hands were sore and the miner declared that he needed another drink before he could go again. Surely by now, Bilbo thought, the dwarves would have exhausted themselves and might make the suggestion of sleep, but instead they took the little respite as a chance to show of feats of strength.

No one was quite sure who made the frankly brilliant suggestion that a spot of arm-wrestling would be most welcome, but when the cry went up, the Company cheered and it was then that Bilbo sneaked away for bed - there was absolutely no chance he was going to participate and he had nothing to gamble but his remaining brass buttons and his ring. And he was not going to part with his ring.

“Ten on Dwalin!” Dís declared and Thorin laughed at her.

“There hasn’t even been a challenger yet!” he chided her, tweaking one of her ears until she howled. The dancing - for his sister, nephews and cousins would not let him leave the floor once he agreed to tramp the boards with Dís - left him quite parched and he swallowed down two pints of mead, one right after the other to quench his thirst.

“I’ve got faith in him,” she nodded enthusiastically. “‘Less you’re challenger, I can’t very well bet against my own brother.”

“Fifteen for Dori,” Nori said with a gleam in his eye. Dori was up like a shot from the the table.

“Absolutely not,” he said, shaking his head and folding his arms. “I am entirely too old for this foolishness - ”

“That’s a load of rot,” Dwalin laughed. “I’m older than you are and I’m game for it.”

Ori smiled at his eldest brother, eyes shining hopefully, “Oh, come on, Dori, please?”

That was all the coaxing it took. “Fine,” he said curtly, rolling up his sleeve and sitting down on the bench. “For you, mind - not for _him_ to line his pockets.”

Fíli and Kíli found the whole matter a great joke. Mister Dori was, to put it uncharitably, a fussy old git who was more at home shouting about proper behavior and rule-following than he was rolling about on the floor, having a wrestle. They joined their mother in the betting and put five a-piece down on Mister Dwalin.

To their surprise, Dís clapped her hands to her head. “No, lads! If I’d known it was to be _Dori_ \- ah, well, it’s your money to lose.”

The brothers exchanged a glance. Their own Mam doubted that Mister Dwalin would win such a bout? Fíli whispered in Kíli’s ear, “She’s had an _awful_ lot to drink - ” but then Mister Balin said he could not bet against his own brother and begged out of the gambling entirely.

Dwalin laughed shortly. “Thanks for that,” he said with nothing cocksure in his manner at all and _that_ made the brothers worry. In the end, the betting was an even split among the gamblers in favor of Dwalin and Dori both.

The two rested their elbows on the table and commenced. There was grunting. Eventual sweating. And both their arms were trembling with effort and faces red before the winner was declared - fusty Mister Dori himself who ignored Nori’s hearty slaps on the back and Ori’s cheers to frown at Dwalin. “You didn’t have to _crush_ my fingers, you know,” he sniffed in irritation, flexing his hand. “See if I darn _your_ socks on the morrow.”

In the end, it was not exhaustion that prompted the dwarves to sleep in the bed that Beorn’s animal companions laid for them, it was the sheer lack of coordination that comes with drinking twice one’s weight in spirits. As they had at the inn, kin bedded down with kin, two to a bed. Dís leapt into the one she was meant to share with Thorin and proceeded to roll about in the blankets until they were quite tightly tucked about her, leaving nothing whatsoever for her brother to lay under.

“Here now, that’s not fair,” he said, leaning heavily on the bed frame as he squinted down at her. His sister was so well wrapped that only her face was visible, smiling up at him with shining, mischievous eyes. “Naught for me?”

“Nah!” she said, cuddling down into the blankets and closing her eyes. “All mine! Sleep tight!”

“No you don’t,” he retorted, reaching for a pillow and smacked her in the face with it. As her hands were tucked in among the the sheets, she could not remove it and only made a muffled shouting noise. Thorin lifted the pillow off her head and found Dís utterly overcome with mirth beneath it, shaking with laughter. “What was that?”

“I’m King Under the Pillow!” she managed to squeak out before dissolving once again into hopeless giggles.

Thorin smiled, but shook his head at her. “It’s not as funny as all that,” he said, trying very hard to stop himself laughing because, really, it was a _terrible_ pun.

“It is!” she declared, burrowing ever more deeply into the covers.

A bit of fun was all well and good, but Thorin did want to get into bed before dawn. Without a word of warning he found the edge of the blanket and gave the roll containing his sister two hard shakes until the whole mess unraveled and Dís was deposited on the floor.

“Hey!” she squeaked hoisting herself back up into bed, jabbing her brother just above the ear with her finger. In a hissing whisper she scolded him, “You might’ve said _please!_ ”

“Shh!” Thorin’s shushing was louder than Dis’s whispering. “No respect for your fellows at all, we’ve got thirteen others in here trying to sleep.” Bashing her solidly over the head with a pillow he ordered his sister, “Quiet!”

“ _You_ quiet,” she retorted intelligently, biting her thumb quite deliberately in Thorin’s general direction.

“Do that again and I’ll have it off,” he replied, not sounding in the least bit threatening.

When his sister lifted her hand to do just that, Thorin covered her mouth, heedless of her muffled protests. Dís’s response, naturally, was to stick her tongue through her lips and lick him. With a cry of dismay, Thorin wiped his hand clean on her tunic. “That’s disgusting,” he informed her, not remembering to keep his voice down. “You’re a vile little dwarfling- ”.

“Fíli and Kíli!” Glóin’s voice filled the whole room as he bellowed. “Keep quiet or I’ll come over there and gag you with the bedclothes, don’t think I won’t!”

“We didn’t do anything!” the brothers replied as one, sounding sleepy and indignant.

Beneath the quilt they shared, Dís and Thorin tried to smother their laughter in the mattress. “Now look what you’ve done!” Thorin scolded her, tears of mirth soaking his pillow. “You’ve upset Glóin!”

“No!” Dís gasped, shoulders shaking so hard it was a wonder the bedframe wasn’t quaking as well. “Glóin’s never been upset before! Nothing will ever be the same again!”

Thorin absolutely lost even the thinnest veneer of composure at that moment, burying his face his hands and laughing as hard as he ever had. There was no mistaking who the troublemakers were now.

“Come back here!” Balin’s voice sounded from the darkness. “You’re just going to make things worse!”

Too late, for Dwalin stomped across the room and landed heavily atop the bed. Just why Beorn had so very many beds when he lived alone, save for the company of his animals, was a mystery, but none of them had been built to hold three grown dwarves. “Now don’t make me come do something about this you two!”

“You already have!” Dís pointed out cheerfully, hugging one of Dwalin’s arms to her chest. “And you’re here already, so you might as well stay!”

“If he’s staying I’m leaving,” Thorin said, and would have done just that had he not been so disoriented with drink and wrapped in the blankets in such a way that he couldn’t see where they began or ended.

“No, this is _cozy_ ,” Dís insisted, nuzzling her face into the larger dwarf's arm with a contented sigh.

“Do you know, I reckon your little sister’s drunk?” Dwalin asked Thorin conversationally and the latter laughed again, a rich, hearty sound that roused all of the dozing members of the Company.

“Nay! Not _my_ sister,” Thorin chuckled. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

But Dwalin could not answer for a certain small somebody whose white hair caught the moonlight and faintly glowed, took hold of his ankles and sent him to the floor quick as you please.

“That’s quite enough of that,” Balin said firmly. “You’ve had your fun - to bed, if you please. I’ll see you when you wake. Good night.”

“G‘night Balin,” the troublesome pair chorused as one and then finally - _finally_ \- the Company of Thorin Oakenshield lay their heads on their pillows and settled down for a long, sound slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a little carried away writing drunk dwarves, so Bofur and Dís are going to have to wait a chapter for the heart-to-heart I have planned for them. I'm cool with it, more chances for dwarf bonding! As for the dancing, I picture a combination of reeling and moshing ;-) And the song Bilbo sings is "Johnny McEldoo" by Tommy Makem, it's a super fun song that instantly makes me think of hobbits.


	28. Chapter 28

The next morning, they rose slowly, almost indulgently slothful. Their host had not returned and the sunlight woke them slowly, stretching out to rub their eyes with her rose-red fingers. Several of the Company groaned and hid their eyes much as they had done in Rivendell availing themselves of pillow or beard, or blanket to block out the light. Balin and Dori, early risers by nature, were the first to roll out of bed, accompanied by Bombur who was an early riser by virtue of being father to ten excitable dwarflings.

The three of them set about finding something suitable to eat for breakfast, speaking quietly to one another, their murmuring making some of their fellows stretch and yawn, slowly getting up to greet the day.

Not the King Under the Mountain or his counterpart, the self-proclaimed King Under the Pillow. Both brother and sister, in a movement that was so smooth and exact that it looked choreographed, buried their heads beneath their pillows at the same time. Since time immemorial, they’d each preferred a lie-in above all things. If some trickster fairy slyly perched on the bedframe of a morning and offered for the taking either a bar of gold or an extra hour’s rest, the two would be hard-pressed to choose which they’d rather have.

But there were no tricky fairies in their lives. Only a tricky dwarfling with mischief in his mind.

Kíli padded softly on bare feet and came around his mother’s side of the bed, taking hold of one of her loose braids and giving it a tug. “Mam,” he said teasingly. “Breakfast?”

“I swear upon the axes of our ancestors, Kíli,” she groaned, but did not finish the oath and only peeked up at him beneath her pillow with an expression of mingled exasperation and fondness. “How many times have I told you not to pull hair?”

“I’ve lost count,” he said, rocking back on his feet and grinning at her so sweetly she almost didn’t want to smack him for his cheek. “Anyway, breakfast?”

“So long as I don’t have to make it,” she groused, half falling out of bed. With one hand she rubbed her eyes irritably and with her tongue she rubbed her teeth. It felt as though they’d grown moss overnight. Nevertheless, Dís was alert enough to take Kíli’s arm and stay him from rousing his uncle as he had his mother.

Thorin was fonder of those boys than anything, but all the familial love in the world would not save her youngest from being hurled across the room by a near unconscious Thorin Oakenshield suffering the effects of too much drink and too little sleep. “Let him sleep,” she advised. “Go wake up Dwalin, if you need to cause trouble.”

“No need. M’up,” the warrior rumbled from a nearby bed, but he did not _look_ very awake to Dís. He was lying on his back with an arm over his eyes and the blankets tucked right under his chin. On legs that grew steadier the more she used them, Dís stumbled over to his bed and hopped atop it, smiling drowsily at him.

“Are you?” she asked, lightly running a finger down his arm, tracing the track of an old scar idly. “Could’ve fooled me.”

One warm dark eye opened and crinkled around the edges. She would trace those lines too, but the motion would make him flinch and ruin them, so she stayed her hand. “Now there’s a pretty sight,” Dwalin said, taking in the sight of her half undressed and sleep-tousled. Dís marveled that he could be so charming that early in the morning.

It was not a skill she shared. “Don’t get too close,” she advised him, backing away slightly. “My mouth tastes like something crawled in there and died in the night.”

The bed shook with Dwalin’s quiet chuckles. “Best not let our host hear you say that,” he replied, grinning at her. “Wouldn’t want him thinking you’d eaten one of his brethren or what have you.”

That got Dís laughing and effectively woke the rest of the Company. Fíli lobbed a pillow at his mother and it was evident how tired he was for his aim suffered and it landed well short of his intended target.

“Come on, you,” she said, abandoning Dwalin’s bed to put her eldest in a headlock, noisily kissing his temple, despite his squirming and pathetic cry of _Maaaaaam._

“Tsk,” Dís clucked, roughly mussing Fíli’s thick hair before she got off the bed. “You’re as bad as your uncle - ah! And Dwalin’s followed his bad example.”

Evidently Dwalin had tried to get himself up and out of bed and succeeded - at least, he’d left _his_ bed behind. He made it halfway to the larder before he thought the space Dís left vacant beside Thorin looked more inviting than the kitchen and so fell onto the mattress beside him.

“That’s one way to oust the dragon,” Bofur commented, nudging Dís on the shoulder as the two of them watched the sleeping shieldbrothers, snoring in tandem.

“How d’you reckon?” Dís asked, unable and unwilling to stifle her smile behind a stern look.

The miner grinned at her. “Easy. Put them to next to each other, just outside the mouth o’the peak, get ‘em to sleeping and the Worm’ll think as it’s some other drake come to challenge him. He’ll get so flustered searching the creature out we’ll be able to sneak in and barricade the gate ‘fore he knows he’s been tricked!”

Dís clamped him on the back and her smile broadened into a full-on grin. “Ah, Bofur, you’re brighter than the lot of us put together and that’s the truth of it.”

“Got another plan, since I’m so full of good ideas,” he said, snaking his right arm around Dís’s left. “Walk with me. I spied a fine looking bit o’wet out the window and as day’s broken, I can’t hardly think Beorn’ll be too put out if we tramp across his lawn.”

The day had broken and it promised to be a hot one. It was one of those autumn mornings that took one by surprise; even as the sun seemed to shine cooler and cooler every now and again its rays would heat the earth to boiling even as the season drew ever closer to winter. Dís was relieved that she’d left her fur-trimmed coat and heavy boots indoors. The grass was soft beneath her feet, the dew making it slightly slick to walk upon.

Bofur was right, as it turned out. There was an absolutely charming little pool of crystal-clear water surrounded by trees whose ruby and amethyst leaves were dropping off and float like gemstones toward the shore. In addition to her mossy teeth, her skin felt just as grimy; they hadn’t had a decent wash since they were soaked through by rain on the mountainside. A dip before breakfast was just what she needed to restore her equilibrium.

“Very fine,” she declared approvingly, unfastening those hair beads that had not come loose during sleep.

“Race you!” he declared, stripping his tunic off in one swift motion of his hands. Dís was just as swift, trousers and smallclothes getting shed as quick as blinking. It would have scandalized their hobbit something awful, she was sure, for two grown dwarves who were unmarried to shuck their clothes off and shove one another without a care for where their hands wound up as they tried to cheat themselves into the water first. Fortunately Bilbo was asleep and there was no one else about who would hand-wring and blush at the sight of them.

Bofur made it in first by virtue of the fact that he tripped over a rock and propelled himself face first into the water with arms wheeling about comically. Dís took a flying leap in after, water splashing over the banks. The small pond was not yet warmed by the sun’s rays, the frigid temperature woke her right up and she swam back toward the surface with powerful strokes of her arms.

Dwarves were more apt to sink like stones in deep water than float, but she and Bofur were strong and able swimmers that they were not concerned with drowning. They had energy yet to splash at one another, Bofur spit a mouthful of water in Dís’s face before she leaped on him and forced his head underwater even as he threw her off. This rest was miles better than the grating hospitality of the Elves. The danger lurking in the dark corners of the world to snatch at them with its sharp claws seemed more distant now, though they were closer to the mountain than ever.

There was some magic in this place, Dís decided. Magic beyond skin-changers and animal servants. It was peaceful here, there was a settled comfort to the land that she had not known since she was a dwarfling under the Mountain and fire drakes were only creatures she knew from storybooks or clever mechanical creations that lumbered across the stage during theatricals. She did not understand Beorn, what he was or how he guarded his home, but whatever power he had, she felt he wielded it well.

When the chill of the water, combined with the coolness of the air began to become uncomfortable rather than soothing, the two climbed out and lay upon the soft grass beneath the blue sky, the only sound the drone of the bees in Beorn’s hives. It was not a warm bath house, all enclosed in stone, but the place had its own charm. This was not the usual way of their race, spending time among shady trees and grasslands beneath open sky, but they would be fools indeed not to take advantage of the fine weather and enchanting surroundings. Who knew how many good days they had left?

Dís was so comfortable, she could have dozed off, had her companion not roused her from drowsy near-slumber by speaking aloud.

“Now,” Bofur said apropos of nothing, lounging on his side and propping his head up on his fist to stare down at her. “I got something to say to you that ought to have been said a good long while ago.”

“That sounds serious,” Dís remarked, turning her head toward him lazily as she opened her eyes. “Should I get dressed for this?”

“Nah,” he sat up and balanced his elbows on his knees. Dís remained where she was, lying in the patch of sunlight, but she frowned a little. Bofur did not look distressed, exactly, but he was gazing at her with definite intent. That level of focus was something she expected to come from someone like her brother, not her dear friend with his easy smile and ready wit.

“S’not much,” he said, scratching his head. His braids had come out in their swim and his hair lay in long dripping waves over his shoulders. “What I got to say. Only it’s taken so long to getting around to saying it, it feels awfully big. Important and I s’pose it is, but...well, what I mean is... you go for it.”

The words came out almost as a sigh, a great exhale of breath, as if the words had been sitting for years in the back of Bofur’s throat and he was relieved to be free of them at last. His relief was short-lived when it appeared he had to repeat himself, for Dís’s look of incomprehension spoke volumes for her.

“Dwalin, I mean,” he clarified, reaching out a hand to touch her shoulder and gently stay her rising. With all the honest simplicity in the world in his eyes he squeezed her arm and said again, “Go for it.”

Dís opened mouth, protests dying on her tongue even as they flitted through her mind. _I can’t. I couldn’t. I won’t. It wouldn’t be right. It’s too late for all that. It’s impossible._

Then she remembered clear water, like this, the feeling of eyes upon her and the thought that perhaps nothing was impossible after all.

It never occurred to her to protest that she did not want Dwalin. She was not an effective liar and after so many years of steadfast friendship Bofur deserved the honest truth from her.

“It’s not done,” she said at last, sitting up since laying supine made her feel exposed now, in a way she hadn’t felt since she threw her drawers on the ground.

“Not usually,” Bofur acknowledged. “But sometimes. When there’s no one who’ll protest. And who’d dare say a word about it? Your brother being King Under the Mountain and all. ‘Sides, they’d have to hear it from me if they did.”

“Just start again?” she asked, a bite in her tone that sharpened her words. “Like Víli never was?”

Dís was being cruel to mask her own hurt, they both knew it and Bofur was kind enough to forgive her for it instantly. She had to right to speak to him that way. None at all, as he reminded her.

“I known him longer than you did,” he spoke after a pause just long enough that Dís could feel her stomach clench and tie itself in knots. “And, if you’ll pardon me saying so, loved him longer. Dís, he’d never want you a-mourning and a-grieving him all the days of your life. Víli loved you, lass, he wanted you to be happy. _I_ want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy enough,” she said, eyes darting about for anything to look at other than Bofur’s earnest face. All the fight went out of her, she sank back down upon the ground and stared at the sky, arms under her head. “Happier than Thorin.”

“Lass, I’d lay good money down them _weeds_ is happier than Thorin,” he nodded toward some spindly greenery growing along the banks of the pond. “Which they should be. They’re in their proper place. And this quest, if it comes off alright, we’ll have Thorin in his proper place. And you in yours, if you heed me. Ain’t right, you being alone.”

“I’m not alone,” she replied, rising again to sit and look Bofur frankly in the eye. Dís took one of his hands and smiled at him, sadly and sincerely. “I’ve never been alone. You made sure of that.”

“Weren’t just me,” he acknowledged, squeezing her fingers back in turn. “And don’t make me sound so grand, you’ll have me blushing. You’re an easy one to love, is all. You and yours. We - me, Bombur, Thyra, Bifur, the sprogs, the lot of us - we want you happy. It’s all we’ve ever wanted for you. And if you and Dwalin’ll be happy with each other, you should be. Seventy-seven years...it’s a long time to mourn, lass. And him who you’re mourning wouldn’t want it this way, you know he wouldn’t.”

Bofur was right, of course he would. Popular wisdom held that the dwarf you married in this world would be waiting to greet you with open arms in the next, but Dís could see Víli, perpetually young and handsome in Mahal’s glittering halls. He’d not frown, but he wouldn’t quite smile either. His head would be cocked and his eyebrows raised. _Ah, lass,_ he’d sigh, shaking his head. _Your Longbeard moroseness got the better of you, eh?_

Dís loved her husband. She _did_ love her husband, she loved his sweet nature, his bright smile, his warm arms, his laughter, his generosity...there wasn’t a thing about him that wasn’t loveable. But had she ever been _in_ love with him? If she was honest, truly honest with herself, she would have to admit that she was not. And she loathed herself for that because Víli, low-born, simple miner though he had been, was one of the greatest dwarves who had ever lived. Pure gold. He deserved a wife who loved him with everything she was and instead he got _her_. It wasn’t fair.

“You loved him better than I did,” she said softly, looking down at their joined hands. How was it Bofur had not pulled away? He was so aware of her emotional infidelity that he was urging her to follow her passion’s path even as it led her further and further away from her husband.

“Not better,” he shook his head. “Just different. He was _so_ happy with you. Like I said, s’all I want for them I love.”

Giving her fingers one final supportive squeeze, he rose and dressed. Dís did the same, keeping her back to Bofur not out of any new-found sense of hobbitish propriety, but so he would not see the tears that dripped from her eyes and mingled with the drops of pond water that trailed down her face.

Before they made ready to go back, she rounded on him and threw her arms around Bofur’s neck. His arms were around her waist and he held her close as she buried her face in his neck and sighed into his shirt. They’d embraced a thousand times in the years since, but she was drawn back to the day when the two of them stood in a dark room with their hearts cracked to breaking, one of the finest dwarves they knew lying still and immobile under a bloodstained sheet.

“Thank you,” she said and hadn’t any idea what she was thinking him for. For understanding? For giving her permission to give in to feelings she’d been beating back for almost a century? Or simply for being a good, kind soul when she most needed it and least deserved it?

Whatever it was, Bofur did not need to be told. He held her tight and kissed the side of her head with deepest care and affection. “You’re welcome,” he replied, then tilted her chin up and smiled at her. “It’s not as though I expect you to run off and have a go with everyone watching,” he joked. The corners of Dís’s mouth turned up despite herself. “But...think on it, eh? We might live three hundred years or die tomorrow. And it’d a sore shame to leave work behind untended to either way.”

“That one of your Ma’s wise old sayings?” Dís asked, wiping her face dry on her sleeve.

“Not this time,” Bofur smiled crookedly and placed his hat on his head as he took her arm once more and led the way back to the house. “S’one of his.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter than the last two chapters, but full of Feeeeeeeeels! I have my own headcanons regarding the marriage taboo that I will happily discuss if you want, if not, enjoy the nekkid!dorfs and friendship!


	29. Chapter 29

When Bilbo roused himself after Bofur nearly squeezed him flat, pouncing on him and shouting in his ear, he took his breakfast in the same leisurely manner he enjoyed in the Shire. Boiled oats with lots of honey and cream, eaten with fat strawberries nearly the size of his palm were very welcome fare. He was only sorry that Beorn did not seem to have any tea. The meal would have been quite perfect if he had a steaming cup with cream and sugar. A rasher of bacon fried up in the pan would do nicely. And a scone or two to drizzle with that lovely honey would not have gone amiss.

There being no sign of Gandalf or Beorn, he supposed they were staying on another day and that suited the hobbit quite nicely; perhaps, if they were amenable (and after so much travel on scanty rations, he was sure they would be) and there was time, he might introduce his traveling companions to the incomparable joys of _second_ breakfast.

The day was fine, hot for autumn, but a bit of warmth on the skin was just the thing for a mid-morning nap. Had this been a day spent in the Shire, Bilbo might have ambled his way down to the market, passing any number of stalls, all tended to by fat-bellied hobbits leaning on fence posts or sitting upon stools, chatting amiably about this and that or else tipping their caps low on their brows to shade their eyes and have a little rest. Anyone interested in buying their wares would either render payment in full upon their carts or else rouse them to have a little haggle. Or, often, the buyer decided that Mistress So-and-So looked so comfortable that they would take a leaf out of her book and return home for a lie-down in the sun.

The dwarves were in the sun, certainly and many of them were sitting either in the relative cool of Beorn’s hall or lounging upon his porch, but none rested. Óin was drying and bundling the medicinal herbs Bilbo helped him pick yesterday and in between carrying on what appeared to be a lively conversation with Bifur in the dwarves’ finger talk. Bifur’s hands were occupied too, whittling down a new block of wood that had yet to resemble anything in particular. Bombur joined them with his own whittling knife and seemed content to watch, though his merry laughter indicated that whatever Bifur gestured at Óin was very funny indeed.

Balin and Ori had their heads bent over the latter’s notebook and were speaking quietly to one another, but they stopped when Bilbo passed and bid him a pleasant, ‘Good morning,’ Ori’s arm and sleeve neatly covering the text. Their smiles were sincere and as they were some of the kindest members of the Company, Bilbo could not bring himself to be all _that_ annoyed that he was being very politely frozen out of their conversation. Dwarves did love their secrets, after all. Even hobbits knew that. Bearded, secretive, tight-fisted and they spoke of nothing but their wares when the odd peddler passed through Hobbiton.

  
Bilbo found they both were and weren’t all of the things he’d heard of dwarves in his youth. Bearded, oh yes, very much so. Secretive too, there was no denying that. Only Balin engaged him in his attempts to make small talk about the weather and even then it was not the same as it was at home. But they could talk of their crafts with the same detail and care most hobbits used to describe their children. And they loved their families deeply. And would die for their friends and kinfolk. They were noble. No one ever called dwarves noble in the Shire, they called them _greedy_ , but not noble.

The world, Bilbo was fast concluding, was a very big place. With very many people in it. And perhaps, just perhaps, Gandalf was right and all its truths could not be contained within his books and maps. Some things one had to see for oneself.

Dori was doing some darning and Glóin was counting out the contents of a sagging money bag with a furrowed brow. Neither was speaking to the other, nor did they look up when Bilbo walked past them into the sunshine. The remainder of the Company was out of doors, Nori and Dwalin were doing something with knives that looked quite dangerous and very damaging to one of Beorn’s trees. Kíli was seated on the ground, restringing his bow with his tongue poking out the side of his mouth while his brother fletched arrows.

Bofur was perched upon one of Beorn’s porch rails, whistling to himself and carving, like his cousins, though his hat provided shade enough that he did not mind sitting in the sun, as they seemed to.

Everyone had some occupation or other, Thorin and Dís were seated back to back, polishing their swords. Thorin’s hardly needed the attention and looked as shiny as ever to Bilbo’s untrained eye, but Dís was using her short thumbnail to scratch dried blood from around the guard. She flicked some of the hard black gore in Thorin’s direction and he hit her with his scabbard to make her stop. Bilbo smiled at her and she waved, patting the ground next to her, indicating that he should sit.

Thorin looked at him and though he did not smile, grunted something that sounded nearly cordial. Bilbo decided it meant ‘Good morning,’ and ‘Good morning-ed’ him right back. His treatment by the dwarf king had not been polite by even the most Tookish standards of decent conduct, but after their brief chat the night before, he was willing to let bygones be bygones. Begin again, clean slate. It was the sort of action his father might have taken - his mother would very probably have instructed him to deliver Thorin a swift kick in the shin, but in this instance, he thought the Baggins way might be the best way.

“Awfully, close, aren’t we?” he asked rhetorically, settling down on an obliging patch of clover. It was not quite the truth, for the Lonely Mountain seemed terribly far away when he saw it upon the Carrock, but he doubted he would feel this sanguine about the distance when he stood at the foot of the peak and was expected to burgle a dragon. “It’ll be nice to have a rest, won’t it? To put your feet up, I mean.”

Dís’s welcoming smile turned down at the edges and she gave Bilbo a searching look. Thorin stopped his attentions to his sword and eyed the little halfling suspiciously. “Beg pardon?” he asked, giving Bilbo the chance to rescind his insult.

“Well, I mean, when, er, all’s said and done,” he said, looking anxiously between the two siblings, unsure why they were looking at him like he’d just said something unkind about their mother. “Take a bit of a holiday. No more smithing.”

It was a tribute to how relaxed Thorin had become the previous evening that he did not storm off in a huff or retort with an unkindness about _Bilbo’s_ mother. Instead his mouth dropped open in unkingly shock and he stared at the halfling incredulously.

“No more smithing,” he repeated, rattled to the core by the merest insinuation that anything short of double amputation or death would make him give up his craft. Honestly, if he suffered the former tragedy he would probably try to learn to fuller with his feet and even after death it would be the work of their race to remake the world after the Last Battle.

Bilbo sat up slightly straighter, tearing a piece of grass to shreds nervously between his fingers. “Erm...what I meant to say...” he floundered for he’d said what he meant, but that evidently was not what the dwarves wanted to hear. “That is...”

“Idleness,” Dís began carefully, speaking the word like it was an oath she was trying out for the first time, “is enjoyable to your people? Valued, I mean?”

“Ye-es,” he replied carefully. “A sunny spot and a hammock is all any hobbit needs to occupy himself until dinnertime on a day such as this - well, perhaps not dinner. Second breakfast, though, easily.”

“What’s a hammock?” Fíli asked curiously, but Bofur called out an answer over his whittling.

“Fishing net! They use ‘em on sailing ships so’s to have more room for sleeping.” With an easy smile of remembrance he added, “Me an’ your Da used to talk of going to sea when we was wee dwarflings. Reckoned it’d be a grand adventure - if we could find our way to water bigger’n a stream or pond.”

“You’ve been to sea, Bilbo?” Kíli asked, the very picture of excitement. “Did you spear any Leviathans?”

“What?” the hobbit asked, startled. Oh bother, this was exactly the same sort of little misunderstanding that occurred in his smial. Why were these dwarves so intent upon making an adventurer out of him? “No, no, certainly not! Hobbits are meant to live with two feet planted firmly upon the ground, thanks very much. Hammocks in the Shire are not to be found upon fishing boats, they’re strung up betwixt two trees and used for napping.”

“How do you manage that?” Dís asked with a cheeky grin. “If you’re meant to keep your feet on the ground.”

“Well, they’re not very high _off_ the ground,” Bilbo retorted quickly. There was a four-leaf clover near his knee and he plucked it, twirling the plant in his fingers before he tucked it behind his ear. Maybe he should ask Ori if he could borrow his book to press it. He needed all the luck he could get. “Not more than a foot or so, I should think. Don’t dwarves ever stop working?”

“When we’re sleeping,” Kíli replied, all earnest expression, though he cocked his head at the bit of green poking out among their burglar’s curls.

“Or drinking or dancing,” Fíli added brightly, holding a new arrow up to admire it.

“That looked like a great deal of work to me,” Bilbo said and Dís laughed. Even Thorin’s lips became a little less thin when he accepted that the hobbit meant no harm with his ill-thought comment.

“Hobbits are like Men, then?” Thorin asked. “It was said, the Lord of Dale did not know how to lace his own boots.”

“I really couldn’t say,” Bilbo shrugged. There may have been an insult in there, but he chose not to hear it. “Hobbits don’t wear boots.”

Kíli seemed slightly perplexed by the entire conversation. Not wearing boots was one thing, but to go through life without a steady stream of honest work was incomprehensible to him. “But you have a trade, don’t you?” he pressed, poking Bilbo on the arm with his bow.

“Trade? No - and do stop that,” Bilbo chided, watching with some alarm as the young dwarf’s eyes widened and his chin fell to his chest, adopting the same nearly horrified expression that his uncle wore moments ago. “I’m a gentlehobbit.”

“Surely you don’t just lie about in fishing nets all day,” Fíli stated, sure his brother was mistaken in his assumptions about Bilbo’s lack of occupation. Kíli was coming very close to accusing another creature of laziness and that simply wasn’t done. “You’ve got something you were Made to do, haven’t you?”

The way the Dwarves spoke, it was clear that they had quite a bee in their bonnets over Bilbo’s perceived lack of employment. For his part, he did not see what all the fuss was about, what business was it of theirs whether he labored or not? And furthermore, what was so wrong with enjoying a bit of a lie-down in the afternoons?

“I have my books and maps,” he said at last, hoping that would satisfy them.

“Oh,” Fíli’s expression cleared and he breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re a scholar. Well, you might’ve said that, mightn’t you?”

“I told you that already,” his mother piped up. “Back in Rivendell, remember? We had a cozy time reading some Elvish poetry together.” Dís winked and Bilbo blushed from the apples of his cheeks to the tips of his pointy ears.

Thorin snorted and remarked, “I’d prefer to forget everything about that place.”

“Not _everything_ ,” his sister reminded him pointedly, nudging him in the ribs. “And they weren’t so bad, as Elves go. High in the instep, aye, but not cruel.”

Thorin’s mouth twisted, but he nodded, giving his full attention to his sword. “Aye,” he acknowledged the truth of her words. “Not cruel.”

It was not the Elves of Rivendell who refused to aid his people, their allies, during their time of greatest need. The foul feelings between their races went back far and their convictions were deeply held, but the core of Thorin’s resentment was reserved for the Elves of Greenwood the Great - or, as Radagast would tell it, Mirkwood the Foul. Whatever pestilence was growing in that would, he did not doubt, originated directly from the Elvenking’s black heart. Perhaps, like dwarves, age hardened him, but it was not his flesh that grew tough, nor his bones that came like stone. It was his soul that withered and could not be moved, not by appeals or tears or misery -

Something thwapped him hard on the back of the head and Thorin squinted up to see Dwalin standing over him, looking annoyed. “Stop it,” he said, sitting down on Thorin’s other side and squinting out across the lawn.

“What?” Thorin asked, cocking his head up at him.

“Whatever you’re thinking of,” he replied. “It’s not doing you any good. Stop it.”

Thorin rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to his weapon. “Haven’t you got something to attend to?” he asked, eyeing Dwalin out of the corner of his eyes. “Or have you decided to follow in Mister Baggins’s footsteps and put your feet up?”

It was a jest, a retaliation for the cuff he received, like an inattentive dwarfling dozing at lessons, but Thorin realized a moment too late that his comment was ill-received. Very ill-received.

With a huff like distant thunder, Dwalin got up and stalked off. Thorin’s brow creased and he dropped the scrap of cloth in his hand and exchanged a bewildered look with his sister. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he called lamely after his friend, but all he saw was the line of Dwalin’s shoulders walking away from him.

“No, don’t get up,” Dís said, putting a hand on Thorin’s shoulder and getting to her feet to chase after Dwalin. She had no idea what got his dander up any more than her brother had - it was a grave insult to be called lazy, but surely their cousin knew that Thorin was only joking, he would _never_ speak such a thing seriously - but she fancied herself slightly better at soothing ire than her he was. “I’ll sort it.”

Dís was considered quite tall among their people, but she had to jog to keep up with Dwalin’s long strides and lunge forward to catch his arm to prevent him outpacing her still more. “What’s wrong?” she asked simply. “I don’t want you to be vexed, not when we’ve finally got the chance to enjoy two days together when we aren’t running for our lives.”

Dwalin’s face was set in hard lines, like granite, and he was so handsome in the morning sun that she recalled Bofur’s words of only an hour before as though her friend was whispering them into her ear. _Go for it._

But after so many years of denial, denying herself and him, giving in did not come easy. And she could hardly say a word when Dwalin was before her, doing his very best impression of a statue.

“What?” he asked, folding his arms and giving Dís a hard, inscrutable look. “I’m not allowed to be vexed your brother likened me to the halfling, damn his eyes.”

“Oh, come along now,” Dís folded her own arms and frowned up at him in exasperation. “Thorin’s decided to be halfway civil to poor old Bilbo and now you’ve decided you don’t like him? He saved Thorin’s _life_ \- ”

“So he did,” Dwalin interrupted and Dís stepped back, mouth parting as she understood his anger. It wasn’t anger at all. As so often happened among those she held dearest, what took on the appearance of rage was merely regret. And guilt.

Dwalin had a reputation the world over for being a fierce as a bear or a wolf. Foreign dwarves trembled to meet him, overcome with awe. They spread the most fanciful rumors about him. Always she found them very funny and helped encourage them. All out of selfishness, of course. All dwarrows knew of Dwalin’s bravery, his strength, his valor. Few knew his heart and Dís preferred to keep it that way, she liked being one of a select few who could say they truly _knew_ Dwalin, son of Fundin, beyond his reputation.

What would those Blue Mountains dwarves say if they if they saw him now? He abandoned his furs, but the thick muscles in his arms and chest were visible beneath his tunic, the breadth of his shoulders massive. Dark eyes glowered and sinews stood out starkly as his hands curled into fists. What would they advise her to do? _Beware, lady. Beware his wrath._

“Oh, Dwalin,” she breathed more than spoke, and put a warm hand upon his arm. He turned his head, but did not shake her off. “You know,” Dís began again, more lightly now. “There are times I think you’re too noble.”

Dwalin snorted and shook his head, pressing his lips together stubbornly against a smile. “You’re - ”

“A menace, I know,” she said, tightening her grip lest he try to pull away.

“I was going to say a gem,” he looked back at her, eyes so sad and tired that Dís was left almost speechless. “To forgive me so quick and with such kindness.”

“I’m not being kind - no kinder than you deserve.”

Dwalin closed his eyes and shook his head, contempt writ large in his every feature. “I’ve made him _vows_ , lass, as go deeper than any contract. My friend, my king, my _brother_ was in a warg’s jaws and what did I do?”

“You saved your own life and came forward when you could,” Dís replied, her free hand coming up to grip Dwalin’s other arm. “That’s what we _all_ did.”

“I ought to have - ”

“What?” she demanded. “Tried to fly for him? You are _extraordinary_ , I don’t think there’s much you can’t do, but you’re not...invulnerable. We none of us are - the hobbit least of all. And before you tell me,” she added, for she could see in Dwalin’s pained brown eyes that he dearly wanted to speak over her, “that it’s your duty to die for him, could you...just consider that there’s nothing cowardly or shirking about living for him as well?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing for the last century?” he asked incredulously. “‘Course I...you don’t know, lass, you don’t know what it is to look on him who you’ve pledged your life to keep safe and watch him _fall_.”

“I do,” she said and there was no scorn in her voice, only plain honesty. “I was stuck in that damned tree too.”

Dwalin looked in her eyes and saw what he’d always known: They were both shieldbrothers in the same war. The war for Thorin Oakenshield’s life, heart, and mind. Despite the battles he’d fought in, the banners flown overhead, the good dwarves he’d seen fall beneath blade and bow, Dwalin was sure he’d never known or ever would know a fiercer warrior than Dís if he lived to be three-hundred.

Now she removed her hands from his arms and slid an arm around his waist, holding him in a half-embrace. “Come on,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Let’s go back.”

Dwalin rested an arm over the back of her shoulders and squeezed her to his side. As they neared Beorn’s home, he paused his step and looked down at Dís seriously. “I hope you know,” he said quietly as Thorin rose and crossed the distance between them. “It’s not just for Thorin’s sake I carry on.”

She rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek, just before Thorin came into earshot, “Nor I neither,” she whispered, but said no more for her brother stood before them, looking like a chastened dwarfling. Bilbo had not moved from his place on the grass and was watching the scene unfold curiously. Taking a step back from Dwalin, Dís gestured for the two of them to come together, as she used to do when Fíli and Kíli had a row. “Now, let’s embrace and be friends again, shall we?”

They hardly needed to be told. When Thorin and Dwalin were themselves dwarflings, they embraced on meeting and on parting and ofttimes in the middle, for no reason other than to comfort or simply because they felt like it. As they grew up, they held one another more and more after times of tragedy that to do so casually only conjured up bad memories, so they refrained. They’d almost forgotten what it felt like to embrace one another without the feeling that the world was ending around them.

It was really very sweet, Dís reflected. Which, of course meant that it would not last.

“Don’t be such an arse, eh?” Dwalin asked, knocking Thorin hard on the arm.

“I didn’t think you’d be so hot about it,” Thorin said, almost sheepishly, punching him right back. Dwalin was on the verge of replying when Kíli spoke up from behind them.

“Of course you didn’t,” he said, badly suppressed laughter making the words warble as he spoke them.

Fíli was on his feet beside his brother having followed their uncle, crafts abandoned. He was more composed than Kíli, but the reason they were both standing was clear enough when he said, “You know nothing of the world,” and without waiting a second for the words to sink in, both of them ran away from Thorin as if their boots were on fire.

Thorin and Dwalin looked at one another and nodded in tandem. With a friendship as long and deep as theirs, neither needed to give the order to charge before they gave chase, hot on the little imps’ heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the last serious bit of fluffy cuteness for a while - I don't want it to end! But all things must and it's off to Mirkwood! Elvenkings and darkness and spiders, oh my!


	30. Chapter 30

They saw nothing of their host all day and Kíli’s sharp eyes only picked out the tip of Gandalf’s tall hat rising over the hill as the dwarves settled down for their supper. The wizard joined them, but dismissed their queries, refusing to answer any of their multitude of questions until he had some supper and a smoke.

“Where has your skinchanger taken himself off to?” Thorin asked as Gandalf spread butter over his bread (and, to Thorin’s mind, was devoting far more time to the task than was necessary).

Gandalf helped himself to a rather large bite, chewed it thoughtfully, and swallowed it down with a long draught of mead before he made his reply. “I do not know,” he said and the dwarves attempted to stifle their groans - some, it must be said, were rather more successful in the task than others. “That is to say, I have a very good idea, but I lost the trail across a river - I believe he returned to the place where we had our...rather unpleasant encounter with the Wargs and their masters the night before last.”

“Wargs?” Bilbo spluttered, so alarmed he dropped his soup spoon. “Do you mean to say that they may have _followed_ us?”

“Not at all, my dear fellow!” the wizard replied hastily. “I mean to say that while they are definitely attempting to follow us, we have an ally who seeks to impede their movements.”

“I thought you said he was no hunter,” Dwalin asked, giving Gandalf a searching look.

“He does not hunt animals, Dwalin, as I said,” was the patient reply. “Creatures of the forest who do no harm other than that which nature intended. Wargs are...well, quite a different matter altogether. I do not believe we shall be seeing our host this evening, but once daylight is upon us, he will tell us how our path lies. In the meantime, I believe we should enjoy his generosity - and remember his words about not venturing out of doors in the evenings.”

They passed the time idly, as dwarves understood idleness. Following their wizard’s example, pipes were passed around so their final stores of tobacco could be shared amongst them all. Fíli and Kíli were wasting their turns at the bit trying to blow smoke rings. Bilbo was doing his best to teach them while Thorin and Dwalin provided unhelpful commentary from the sidelines.

“You’ve got to draw the smoke into your throat,” the hobbit said, gingerly patting Kíli on the back as he hacked up a lung having inhaled too much too deeply.

“I did,” Kíli wheezed, passing the pipe to his brother. “It got stuck partway.”

Fíli started off alright, but as he attempted to configure his mouth in the position Bilbo explained was preferred for creating the perfect ring, his eyes went a bit wide which prompted Thorin to place his face in his hand, laughing into his sleeve.

“I’ve got a fish for a nephew,” he chuckled, shaking his head ruefully and Dwalin laughed which caused Fíli to choke and splutter just as much as his brother had.

“Next in line to be King Under the Sea,” Dwalin nodded, stroking his chin thoughtfully as Fíli glared at him, still too overcome with coughing to make a retort. “Or something a bit less grand, mayhap.”

“King Under the Lake?” Thorin suggested and Fíli lobbed a roll at him. His uncle plucked it out of the air and broke it in two, handing one half off to Dwalin.

“Puddle, I think,” his cousin said decisively, finishing the bread off in two bites. “Couldn’t have buttered it first, eh, laddie?”

Kíli, now recovered from his own fit, pounded Fíli on the back more vigorously than Bilbo had done for him. “Come on, now, that’s poorly done! You want to be worthy of your post, don’t you, your Soggy Highness?”

“Mam,” her eldest complained finally, scooting to his mother’s side and tugging on her hair in a way he knew annoyed her. “Aren’t you going to defend me?”

“Nah,” Dís said, patting his shoulder sympathetically. “Keep at it - once you’re a bit more capable, you might move up from puddles to millponds.”

Gandalf, who had been listening to the dwarves’ conversation in amused silence, drew in a deep breath of smoke. Either because he desired to show off or because he did not find the royal family of Erebor half as witty as they themselves did, the wizard blew out a dense cloud of smoke that configured itself into a flock of ravens which circled Fíli and Kíli’s heads before vanishing up the chimney.

The young dwarves looked at each other in open-mouthed astonishment and then glanced down at the pipe in Fíli’s hand. Without a word, Fíli handed it back to its owner and Bofur took the bit in his mouth with a smile.

“Aww, Gandalf put you off, has he?” he tutted. “Too bad, I guess you’ll never get higher’n a puddle Fíli m’lad.”

“It’s a half hour wasted, anyway,” Fíli shrugged, but he was smiling. It was nearly impossible to get Fíli down for long, he had enough faith in his uncle to know his fitness to rule would not be judged on his ability to smoke artfully. If it was the Maker’s will - and Fíli hoped with all his might that it would be - he would have plenty of time to master the making of smoke rings before he was called to become the next King Under the Mountain.

“Not to mention a bowl of pipeweed smoked to ash for naught,” Thorin said, but his voice carried the hint of a sly half smile. Fíli would bear any teasing his uncle had to throw at him cheerfully - how long had it been since Thorin _teased_ any of them? Not Rivendell, he’d been in a rotten mood the entire time - the Shire? Longer still? Before he departed from their house in the Blue Mountains. A house, he now realized, staring around at the walls of Beorn’s home, he would never see again, whatever the outcome of their quest. Strange that he should not have understood that until this moment.

“Oh, it wasn’t a total loss, I don’t think.” Ori interrupted them, smiling in a proud way, turning his sketchbook around with an air of triumph. There upon the page was a rendering of Bilbo in clean, clear lines. “You sat still so long I got a proper likeness, finally!”

“Oh, you sneak!” Bilbo announced, but he got up and took up the page, tilting his head and smiling in a manner that indicated he was not half as put-out by Ori’s underhanded artistry as he sounded. “Oh! Ah. Well...sneak or no, I will thank you all the same. That’s talent you have there - combined with a very able imagination, I don’t think I’m nearly as handsome as all that.”

“Nonsense!” Nori declared, snatching the picture out of Bilbo’s hand. “You’re the handsomest hobbit I’ve ever seen - anyway, ugly folk weren’t allowed to join the quest. It’s why we number fourteen only, you wouldn’t believe some of the unfortunates who wanted to join up. They breed ‘em skinny and pointy-eared in the Iron Hills with noses no longer than your little finger nor wider than your thumb!”

Dori poked Nori sharply in the back of his head with one of his knitting needles; one in their number _did_ have ears that came to a point and he would not abide his brother’s rudeness on the subject. “I’d not be blathering on about who’s skinny if I were you,” he pointed out, eyeing Nori’s midsection pointedly. “How many notches have you got in _your_ belt as go beyond the buckle?”

“And let’s leave off the topic of noses, if you would,” Dís said, reaching out and giving Nori’s fresh braided hair a tug, pulling it askew. “Some of us weren’t as favored in that area as others.”

“Aw, sister, you’ve got charms aplenty as make up for your wanting bitty nose,” Nori said, hopping up onto the bench beside Dís. One arm went over her shoulder and he stroked the bridge of her nose fondly. It was long enough that she would not be called plain, but rather thin for all that.

She snapped at him with her teeth and he took his hand away, to everyone’s general amusement. They were all in good spirits, but not so wild as they had been the night before deep in their cups. Their burglar seemed much less skittish for it.

Dís could not speak for her fellows, but she wanted to be clear-headed this night. Once Beorn returned, they would so be on their way again and Thorin would have to bury the face of the brother, the friend, the uncle beneath the trappings of King and leader. It was a role she felt he filled well, but she wanted to make a memory of his face as it was now, the laugh lines around his eyes, the curl of his mouth, the way he say shoulder to shoulder with Dwalin, both relaxed and leaning against the wall carelessly.

Bofur’s pipe made a reappearance and he asked if anyone cared to do a bit of singing. Fíli’s head snapped up and he looked at his mother eagerly. “Mam,” he plucked at his mother’s sleeve and smiled at her artlessly. “Sing us a song, would you? S’been an age.”

“Would you, Mam?” Kíli asked, his upturned face as bright and eager as a pup’s.

“Oh, _please_ , Mam?” Nori chimed in, folding his hands together under his chin and batting his eyelashes like a coquette with an unfortunate facial tic.

“I will if you stop making that face,” Dís said and Dori harumphed his agreement. “What’ll it be, lads?”

Fíli and Kíli hemmed and hawwed, one suggesting a song that the other shot down immediately in favor of what he considered to be a superior choice. Naturally, his brother would disagree just to be contrary and they wound up back where they started. This went on until Dwalin spoke up.

“Something sweet, lass.”

Dís’s mouth widened in a slow smile. “I know just the one,” she replied. It was a song which had originally been rendered in Khuzdul, but was translated into the Common Speech centuries ago.

 _“Love me one more time._  
 _Make this night last forever._  
 _For on the morrow I leave for battle._ ”

The translation did not do the song justice; in the tongue of Man it sounded like a song for lovers, but the meaning was more obscure in the language of their people. It could have been a song for brothers, sisters, even for there were many types of warfare. A parent to a child. A child to a parent. A captain to his troops. Despite the pride their people took in warfare, they were not savages, nor were they callous. Glory had its price. And nothing could be called a sacrifice unless there was suffering involved in its extraction.

Their hobbit might not understand fully, but her people would, so she sang it anyway, for all of them. The tune was the same, whatever language it was sung in. And it was a sweet one.

_“I may survive and I shall return to you._  
 _But come the morrow, I leave for battle._  
 _And if I die, just remember I love you_  
 _And you’ll always be mine_

_Let us warm up this cold night together.  
Come the morrow I leave for battle.”_

And the morrow would come, swiftly or slowly. They sang some and spoke a bit, but one by one the Company made their way to their beds to pass one last night in safety before they made their way East.

Aside from their one night at the Green Dragon Inn, it had been years since Dís and Thorin shared a bed, not since they settled in the Blue Mountains and saved up enough money that each could sleep singly. When they were young, there was no choice, nor bed either most nights on the road. There she bedded down between both her brothers, Thorin on the right, Frerin on the left; as a result she always slept better when there was another beside her.

Thorin had suffered troubled sleep nearly as long as Dís could remember. When he did fall into slumber, often it was light, uneasy and plagued with bad dreams. Many was the night she left him sitting in a chair before the fire and rose to find him in exactly the same place the next morning, face and hands clean, but eyes ringed with dark circles that spoke of sleeplessness.

While she certainly felt for him, rarely did Thorin’s inability to sleep impede her own rest for Dís was quick to drop off and difficult to wake. Now, lying inches away from him atop a bed, she felt every dip in the mattress as he turned himself this way and that, in a vain attempt to get comfortable. Just when she was about to nod off, Thorin would move or twitch or remove a blanket, only to replace it moments later.

If she kicked him, he would likely lie still as stone, but that seemed unkind. Instead, Dís rolled onto her side, turning toward him and opening her eyes to the sight of his face, washed pale in the moonlight. It made the silvery strands in his hair and beard stand out starkly.

“Can’t sleep?” she whispered, not desiring a repeat of last night’s ruckus.

“That obvious?” Thorin asked, his voice heavy with self-deprecation. “Close your eyes, I’ll keep still.”

“Nah, s’alright,” Dís replied, covering a yawn with her arm. “I’m not tired.”

“Aren’t you?” Thorin asked, smiling indulgently. “Shall I sing for you?”

Immature, perhaps, but Dís longed to reply with an eager, _Aye, if you would._ Thorin had not sung since they left Bilbo’s smial. When she was a child, he sang to her often to sooth her on the long, cold nights. If she closed her eyes she could pretend she was in her cot, home beneath the Mountain, safe in his arms, cozily ensconced in their father’s armchair before the fire. As time went on, those memories faded; now, if she was to close her eyes and remember her brother’s voice in her ear she would see in her mind’s eye the oilskin walls of their tent and feel the furs at her back, or else the four stone walls of their dwelling in the Blue Mountains.

Well she remembered the song of their homeland, with it’s verses that spoke of the glory of their halls and their crafts now lost in Erebor. Little she remembered them in fact.

“Shall I sing for _you?_ ” she offered, snuggling slightly closer to his side. Thorin lay his arm beneath her head, and Dís lay her head down, pillowed on his shoulder. The gap between her left side and the bed was wider now; room for one more, almost. “Something saucy?”

Thorin chuckled quietly, so quietly it was a mere rumble in his throat. “Ah, no. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times, no bawds before bed.”

“That’s why you’ve never been married,” she retorted, modifying the words slightly. They weren’t hers, they were Frerin’s.

 _“Heard a good one today!”_ he would declare, falling into bed beside his siblings, tapping out a rhythm on a tent pole. “ _’They tender young maids have been courted by many! Of all sorts and trades, as ever were any. A spruce haberdasher first spake to ‘em fair, but they would have nothing to do with small ware -’_

Thorin would reach right over Dís’s head to clout him. _“No bawds before bed.”_

 _“And that’s why you’ll never be married!”_ Frerin would predict, reaching beneath the blankets to tickle his sister’s sides. Dís would have been laughing already, muffled in the pillow or her hand for though she did not quite grasp the meaning of the songs, Thorin’s groans and cross expression never failed to amuse. Frerin’s ferocious tickling would turn those quiet snickers into roaring giggles. _“This one, on the other hand, she’ll have herself a husband, mark me! A fine dwarf who understands the importance of a jape before bedtime!”_

Dís did not laugh now, she sighed and tugged the blankets up higher to warm her back, open and exposed to the night air. “Do you know who Frerin would have adored?” Dís asked and waited, expecting a genuine answer.

“Bofur.”

“Aye, of course, but we both knew that already.”

Thorin’s nose scrunched up in the most endearing fashion as he considered to whom else his sister might be referring. “Bombur?” he guessed.

“Probably,” Dís nodded. “But no. Try again.”

Thorin sighed and stared up at the ceiling, seemingly expecting the answer to appear to him out of the darkness. “...Víli?”

“You’re terrible at this game,” his sister informed him. Thorin had to put his own hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter.

“Then it’s lucky for me we’re not playing high. Do I get a hint?”

“One hint,” she allowed. “Smaller than Bombur.”

“That’s no decent hint,” Thorin grumbled in protest, giving his sister’s hair a sharp pull exactly as her eldest son had done hours before. “Shorter or narrower? Tell me that, at least.”

“Both,” she said and once again, it was no decent hint.

Thorin thought. And thought. His nephews? Both were taller than Bombur, though so not Fíli or Kíli. The longer he wondered about it, the more difficult it seemed to decide on any one dwarf who might be the answer. Thinking of Fíli and Kíli made him turn his mind to those young dwarves they left behind in the Ered Luin. But for the fact that they were _his_ nephews, Thorin would have preferred they remain safe in the West along with Bombur and Thyra’s brood and Glóin and Hervor’s son. Finally, after far too much time had passed to answer, given the simplicity of the question, Thorin ventured, “Gimli?”

Dís’s not-so-quiet snort of laughter told him he was incorrect even before she opened her mouth to say, “Wrong again! Shall I just tell you and have it over?”

“Please,” Thorin replied, of half a mind to take his arm away, turn on his side and bid her a cross good night. It was not Dís’s fault, but he did not enjoy feeling that he’d been made a fool of.

“Bilbo.”

Thorin very nearly boxed her ears for leading him such a stupid jest. How on earth was he meant to come up with the right answer to her little question when there _was_ no right answer? To think that Frerin would have been fond of Bilbo Baggins, their fussy little hobbit companion, their absurd burglar. With his furry feet and careful speech, he might have been a comical figure if not for his unexpected moments of bravery. Fretting over pocket handkerchiefs one day and facing down a warg the next. Scolding his nephews for being bothersome and warmly praising Ori’s ability with pen and ink.

Even now, though Bilbo’s worth had increased in Thorin’s eyes, he hardly knew what to make of him. Travel suited him ill, but he plodded along and complained no more than Dori, when it came right down to it. Weak-limbed, perhaps, but quick with an offer of aid when his services were required. Shy when it came to dancing, but bold in his offer of condolences in the face of old grief and Frerin...

Frerin would have liked him. Very much.

“Ah,” Thorin nodded, kissing the top of his sister’s head. “You’re right, of course.”

“Mmm,” Dís agreed sleepily. Her eyes fell closed and her head dipped lower upon his shoulder. Thorin was not sleeping yet, not even close, for his mind was spinning, the cogs turning and, like an overwhelmed machinist, he found it was all out of his control.

The night was not quiet, around him slumbered his companions and dwarves were never quiet sleepers. The snores spoke of deep rest, broad chests and noses that had been broken at least once, probably more than that. Though he could only barely make out their silhouettes in the dark, Thorin saw his nephews, a tangle of limbs on their bed. Ori was invisible, shut in between Dori and Nori. Brave boys all, he reflected once again. And he was putting them in such terrible danger.

They were about to step into the wild, where there would be creatures more cunning than stone giants and more unnatural even than Orcs and Goblins. How prepared were any of them for that? Theirs was a sort of quest rarely undertaken in the history of their people, though there was much cause. How many of their race sought to reclaim Khazad-dûm? Or Mount Gundabad? Of those few, none succeeded.

 _You might as well attempt to refashion the Iron Mountains,_ a Blacklock Lord said of their quest months ago in the West. There was no scorn in his voice, only wistfulness. _If it could be done...ah, but lad, such glories will not be ours until Durin is again reborn._

Thorin was not Durin the Deathless. Perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, he was as the Goblin King said. Nobody, really. But in this moment he was a King and he would have his kingdom.

“You think we’re doing the right thing?”

Dís was practically dozing, but she woke at the sound of her brother’s voice. She remembered the words hazily, remembered when he spoke them to her in Bag End. There had been no question in them, not then. There was now.

“I do,” she replied, opening sleepy blue eyes. One arm snaked around Thorin’s chest in a loose embrace. “We’ve seen it, haven’t we? And what did the map tell us? ‘Where the thrush knocks?’ Even if Óin can’t hear birdsong anymore it was a good omen, eh? Think on Erebor. It might help you sleep.”

Craning her neck up, Dís pressed a kiss to her brother’s beard, upon his jawline. “Good night, brother,” she said softly. “Sweet dreams.”

He did think on Erebor, but not the grand city he’d known, nor the smoking wreck he’d fled. It was a dim outline on a misty horizon he saw as his eyes closed. Miles and miles from anything; a lonely mountain indeed.

Though he slept, that night there were no dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two songs! Because there will be no singing in Mirkwood - except from hard partying Elves. The first was "Tomorrow I Leave for Battle" by Heather Alexander and the second, "My Thing is My Own," a fantastic traditional (English?) folk song about bodily autonomy (also lady-bits).


	31. Chapter 31

Their host returned the following morning as the Company gathered their gear and made ready to leave. The worst of their injuries were almost entirely healed, even Thorin’s cuts had scabbed over nicely and his bruises were faded to a sickly yellow. They waited only upon the return of their host and this day he gave them satisfaction.

“So here you all still are,” he said, eyes sweeping over the dwarves and settling on the hobbit where his expression settled into a curious fondness. When he swept the hobbit up off his feet, some of the dwarves had to hold themselves back from barking that their burglar was not to be handled like a child or a pet. Not so small as hobbits, perhaps, but dwarves suffered their share of disrespect because of their stature in the wide world and were accustomed to holding their tongues and unclenching their fists because of it.

Bilbo bore Beorn’s good-natured disrespect with a wry smile that dissolved into a look of alarm and an indignant, “I say!” when his waistcoat was prodded.

“Little bunny is getting nice and fat again on bread and honey,” he observed approvingly, setting the hobbit back on his feet. Bilbo tugged his waistcoat down, but did not disagree with Beorn; a few square meals would do him no harm after weeks of deprivation, both those suffered and those yet to come. 

Fíli and Kíli seemed to think he would want consoling after such treatment and sidled up to him as Beorn helped himself to breakfast. “Don’t listen to him, Bilbo,” Fíli whispered in his ear. “You’re not a little bunny.”

“Nah!” Kíli agreed. “You’re the fiercest rabbit I’ve ever known!”

Bilbo was by now comfortable enough with the young dwarves to subject them to the same treatment his young cousins received when they made themselves more annoying than endearing. Reaching up he gave them each a sharp turn of the ear and said, “That’s quite enough of _that_ , thank you.”

“Bad tempered rabbit, eh?” Fíli asked his brother, rubbing the side of his head.

“But fierce!” Kíli maintained. There was no more time for jokes or even scoldings. The rest of the Company mounted the high bench around Beorn’s table and listened intently to his tale.

In his wanderings as a bear he encountered more warg scouts and one Orcish rider. “The goblin patrols roam the forests hoping to scent you,” he warned the dwarves. “They are angry over the death of their King and bay for your blood. You must forgive me for not taking you at your word, but if you lived on the edge of the Mirkwood, you would not believe those you did not hold in regard as a brother or closer.”

“We understand,” Thorin said and his fellows nodded, almost wearily. Dwarves did not trust willingly or easily; there was no need to explain to them the dangers inherent in taking the word of someone who was not kin or friend-like-kin at face value. 

Beorn inclined his great shaggy head in turn and went on. “I hurried home as fast as I was able to see that you were safe and to offer any help I can. I will think more kindly on Dwarves from this day forward, though before your people were no friends of mine - but you who have killed the Goblin King can be no enemy of mine.”

“We - ” Bilbo began to say that, to be perfectly fair, it was _Gandalf_ who killed the Goblin King, but the wizard made no motion to correct Beorn’s misapprehension and Balin, in a motion most unusual, kicked Bilbo’s leg beneath the table. The damage was done though and Beorn looked upon the hobbit with interested in his eyes.

“If you would speak, do so,” he implored.

Licking his lips nervously, Bilbo tried to come up with some observation or query that would not seem too out of place. “W-what became of the warg that you saw?” he asked, though in truth he did not want to know the answer. “And the Orc?”

“Ah.” Beorn’s face darkened and he rose from the table, gesturing toward his front door. “Come and see.”

The sight that met their eyes beyond Beorn’s made Bilbo sway and he would have fallen had Dís not reached out with strong hands to steady him. “It’s not our way either,” she whispered into his ear. “Not with our people. Orcs, though...what need have they of a grave?”

The pale, bloated head of a dead Orc was stuck upon a stake at the end of the lane, its sunken eyes staring sightlessly ahead in warning, the black ichor of its blood congealing around the open mouth. The skin of its mount had been torn clean off the bone and tacked to a tree nearby. The lush green lawn, the bejeweled autumn trees and crystal water just beyond seemed tainted by these grisly additions to the landscape, Bilbo tore eyes eyes away and tried to stare at the ground, the wooden beams, _anything_ but those gruesome trophies.

The dwarves stood their ground and stared. To leave a body unburied was a high crime in the minds of their people, a sin. Unlike Men, they did not leave the heads of their fellow creatures upon pikes and accorded even their enemies - if they be worthy enemies - proper burial. Orcs, as Dís said plainly, were different to them. There could be no place for them in the realm beyond for when the final days came and the time to rebuild the world was at hand not a single Orc would be called upon to remake the land. 

Still, it turned even a dwarf’s strong stomach to look upon a corpse so carelessly mangled after death and not a one protested returning to the interior of Beorn’s hall once their eyes had taken the sight in.

Beorn was good as his word; though he was a fierce enemy, so to was he a loyal friend, just as their wizard told them when they arrived. He outfitted them with food enough for weeks, bows and arrows (“To better slay your goblins,” was what Beorn said, but the dwarves exchanged knowing glances and agreed silently among themselves that if a deer or two fell beneath their bows, none of them would shed a tear except in gratitude) and skins for water.

“Your way through Mirkwood is dark, dangerous and difficult,” he went on. “Water is not easy to find there, nor food. There is one stream there, I know, black and strong which crosses the path. That you should neither drink of, nor bathe in.”

“Why not?” Glóin asked - for he was not going to turn down the promise of water unless he had a very good reason not to. To his simultaneous despair and satisfaction, Beorn offered a _very_ good reason. 

“I have heard it carries enchantment and a great drowsiness and forgetfulness,” he replied. The dwarves looked to Gandalf, but the wizard only nodded gravely. He was altogether less garrulous than he had been in the weeks previous. Thorin had been grateful for the reprieve from unwanted advice and orders, but Gandalf’s curious silence and brief absences now seemed to carry with them a queer foreboding. 

“I doubt,” Beorn said, when Balin refused to take a bow, citing his poor eyesight as a hinderance, “that you will shoot anything, wholesome or unwholesome, in the dim shadows of that place without straying from the path.” Straightening up, seeming more immense than ever he firmly added, “This you _must not_ do, for any reason. But I wish you all speed, and my house is open to you, if ever you come back this way again.”

The Company all bowed before Beorn and thanked him for his hospitality, but beneath their courtesies, every one of them knew that they would not call upon their host again. For however their quest turned out, victorious or not, they would never venture West again.

When they set off, laden down with provisions to replace the ones they’d lost in the goblins’ caves, for a while no one spoke. Then Bilbo, a little curious, fell into step beside Balin and inquired, “This path...is it safe?”

Balin smiled at him wanly. “Ah, laddie,” he sighed, patting Bilbo upon the arm. “Not a road we’ve walked since the Mountain fell has been safe. I’ve not been to the Greenwood myself in over a century. In those days the roads were well-guarded and the pathways clear for travel, but I fear that’s not the way of things any longer.”

“You’ve been here before?” he asked, surprised.

“Not very often,” Balin admitted. “Once or twice, when there was business that required meeting the Elvenking in his halls. Oh, aye,” he added off Bilbo’s astonished look. “Erebor and Greenwood the Great were allied kingdoms.”

“Which made their betrayal all the greater,” Thorin spoke ahead of them without looking back. “If you’re teaching lessons, Balin, could you be a little quieter about it?”

“As you wish,” he replied cordially, tugging Bilbo to the back of the group. Thorin finished his schooling years ago and this was one tale he knew by heart. “Elves and Dwarves have not enjoyed...the strongest of bonds of friendship among the free peoples of the earth.”

“I had notice that,” Bilbo replied wryly, but Balin’s answering smile was strangely sharp.

When the kindly dwarf shrugged his shoulders helplessly, Bilbo was struck by a thought that, despite his wisdom and white beard, Balin was not altogether in his dotage. Beneath the smile and the lines around his eyes there was a strength and a fire in Balin’s eyes and brow that spoke of vigor and undiminished energy. 

“You might find this hard to believe,” he said, keeping his voice low pitched so the sound would not carry to Thorin’s ears. “But the Elvenking used to make the journey to Erebor to pay _us_ tribute. There was a reason the drake’s eye fell upon our kingdom, after all.”

“It was the richest, greatest dwarven stronghold in the world,” Ori said, his voice an excited whisper. Unlike Balin, there was no hardness in his eyes that bespoke old grudges, only genuine awe. “Under King Thrór, there were more surpluses at the end of the trading season than anyone who ruled before him. And it wasn’t just the King who benefitted, everyone prospered when business was good - and it was very good, we weren’t just allied with the Elvenking and Lord of Dale, but with the other Kingdoms in the South, East, and West.”

Dís, walking close by, could not help overhearing. She remembered sadly little of Erebor at the end of the day, but what she did know she was happy to share. “The marketplaces inside the Mountain were a sight to see,” she recalled. “There were stalls that sold the most wonderful array of goods - gems and metals, aye, but sweets and shawls woven with gold and silver thread, spices and stones that when you cracked them open looked as if they had the night sky stuck inside.”

“Dragons don’t turn their eyes on any old rock,” Glóin added. “Erebor was a gem. It wasn’t called the Golden City for nothing.”

“And we had many friends - and enemies,” Balin continued. “Goblins and Orcs are the enemies of the world, but they would threaten our cities, invade our mines, we did what we could to beat the threat back, but though King Thranduil had no quarrel with us during times of prosperity, when we made war, he made his displeasure known.”

Bilbo said nothing and only nodded. He could well understand displeasure with war-making. He shuddered and thought about that Orc’s head skewered by Beorn’s hand, remembered with awful clarity the wargs and Orcs bearing down on them, the sneer upon the Pale Orc’s face as he charged at Thorin and the mirroring set of Thorin’s teeth. Displeasure, Balin called it, but how anyone could be pleased with warfare was beyond Bilbo’s ability to comprehend. 

“It wasn’t any of his business,” Dís muttered darkly. “We never asked him to send his armies to fight for us, did we?”

“Not once,” Balin confirmed. “But Elves...well. They think they have the workings of the world all neatly laid out in their minds and that all will be as it should if only their advice is heeded.”

“Orcs won’t listen to Elves,” Fíli piped up, rolling his eyes.

“Orcs won’t listen to anything, save the sound of steel cutting flesh,” Dís nodded at her son. “My mother always said, they only hear warcries and speak the language of blood.”

“I don’t understand,” Bilbo looked among the dwarves, confused. “Thorin, he said you were betrayed. Elves wouldn’t...wouldn’t betray anyone.”

The dwarves fell silent at that, each given over to a moment of silent contemplation. Some remembered better than others the reasons Elves gave for their frequent chastisements for what they saw as dwarven bloodlust. ‘Think of the children,’ first and foremost on their lips. It was an endless cycle the dwarves were engaged in, they said. Raising children to go for soldiers, then filling the empty helms and suits of male with the children of the fallen. 

Was it not better, they reasoned, to remain as they were? Forget the dream of Khazad-dûm, Gundabad and all the rest? Live as they were rather than die in pursuit of an unattainable goal?

There was reason in such words, though dwarrow pride balked under the thought that they would _ever_ give up the dream of someday reclaiming their former kingdoms. It seemed folly to not reach out with their axes and keep their enemy well away from the gates of their halls. Elves seemed to think that all the world was like the glassy surface of a pond; leave it be and all would be well and tranquil. The dwarves, as they saw it, were tossing stones at that impassive surface and creating ripples. They did not account for the things that lay beneath the surface, foul creations of mud and dark, that would rise from the depths, unbidden, to destroy all the Elves’ precious peace if they were not kept in check.

Anyway, all those words and warnings seemed a mockery when their so-called benevolent allies did not raise a hand to heal the wounded or feed the hungry. What right had they to speak of the sanctity of life when they would not aid the dying at their doorstep?

“When the dragon came, we saw - _Thorin_ saw - them,” Dís said, the first to recover her tongue. “The Elvenking and all his army. Our guardsmen and our warriors stood against the dragon, but what could they do? Some fell by fire, others were crushed to death, either beneath his feet or between his jaws. I remember. I was a wee thing, but I remember, my mother and I nearly didn’t make it out - ”

“You never told me that!” Fíli exclaimed, almost accusatory. In the few stories he heard of the desolation of Smaug, his mother only said that his grandmother ran the two of them out of the halls to safety. 

Dís looked at her eldest frankly. “And why should I?” she asked. “I’m here. We’re all here. When so many did not survive, what right did I have to talk about our near-miss? The walls were shaking, toppling down. We escaped, there were many more who did not. And there stood Thranduil of the Greenwood on the crest of the hill, come, we thought, for aid.”

“And he made a mockery of us,” Glóin interjected bitterly. “There must have been two-hundred of them in their gleaming armor and they _turned away_. With nary a word or a backwards glance. My father cursed them ‘til his voice was gone. My mother only wept.”

“So you see,” Balin concluded in the face of Bilbo’s dumbfounded silence. “It’s not for nothing that some of us are less kindly disposed toward Elves than yourself.”

“No,” Bilbo said at last. “Not...not nothing. Not at all.” 

Balin patted him upon the shoulder and lengthened his stride to rejoin Thorin. Bilbo walked along in silence for a time, lost in thought. Never had he thought of Elves as creatures who were flawed in any way. Not like...well. Hobbits. Or Dwarves, for that matter. He read their histories, he knew they engaged in war and conflict, but always the cause was just, their decisions wise and when misfortune befell them, it seemed due to the cruel hand of Fate - for surely the Elvenfolk could not make _mistakes_. Only now did he realize, somewhat uncomfortably, that those histories were written by the Elves themselves and might, after all, contain a bit of a bias. Dwarves, he had come to know, were a great deal more varied in their forms, temperaments and conversation than the stories about them led him to believe. It was not so shocking after all that the same might be true of Elves. 

So preoccupied was he that Bilbo did not realise Dís stood beside him still until she spoke.

“I thought it was the oddest thing,” she remarked. “You sitting there, cozy as a diamond in its setting, in Lord Elrond’s library. You like Elves, hmm?” 

“I-I do,” he admitted, with only a moment’s hesitation. Even if there was much to question about his previous assumptions of that fair race, he could not deny that he liked them still - anyway, all the Elves he met in Rivendell were gracious and hospitable. It could be that King Thranduil was every bit as treacherous as his companions believed, but surely he was only one bad apple on the tree. 

“I’m not angry,” the dwarrowdam reassured him with a crooked smile. “It just surprised me, that’s all. Before you, I’d never met anyone who thought Elvenkind was worth admiring.”

“I never met a lady dwarf before I met you,” he confessed honestly, grinning in abashment. “I half-believed the rumors that dwarves were carved out of rock.”

“I’ve the scars on my belly and them memory of the birth-pains for those two that’ll tell you different,” she winked at Bilbo. “Could be you’ve met yourself plenty of dwarrowdams, but were fooled by a fine beard. Hervor, Glóin’s wife, is the loveliest girl with the bonniest beard you’ve ever seen. Fire-red curls, she’s had that fine crown of hair as long as I’ve known her and I’ve known her all my life. Eyes like emeralds and skin like cream with cinnamon dashed on top.”

Noting the way Dís’s eyes went far-away and her voice warmed as she spoke of Hervor, Bilbo guessed, “She’s a friend of yours?”

“Oh, aye,” she nodded. “One of my best - even if she’s damned pushy.”

“A pushy dwarf?” the hobbit’s eyebrows disappeared into the mop of curls at his brow as he adopted a look of great surprise. “Perish the thought!”

“You’re cheeky when you’ve had a few square meals,” Dís laughed, giving Bilbo a small playful shove. Nodding at the dwarves who were plodding on yards ahead of them, she added, “Best shake a leg, we don’t want to get left behind.”

“So long as we stay on the path,” Bilbo agreed, quickening his pace to catch up. Taking a chance since Dís, at least, seemed to be in a talkative mood, he asked, “If you don’t mind my asking, what else do you remember about Erebor?”

“I don’t mind your asking, if you don’t mind my answer being a bit scanty,” she replied easily. “It’s not much, but I remember some things - there were pools of water inside the mountain with glittering stones in the walls. My grandmother taught me to swim there, Thorin...also tried to help.”

They were close enough to the front now that Thorin looked over his shoulder when he heard his sister say his name. “What’s that?”

“I was telling Bilbo about your swimming lessons,” she replied and her brother’s mouth twitched into something like a smile.

“I gave you very good advice.”

“‘Kick your legs and don’t drown’ is _not_ very good advice,” Dís countered, grinning. 

“It surely is,” Thorin said easily. “For you remember it even after all these years.”

The two continued in that vein for a while, Dwalin interjecting with some amusing observation here and there. Bilbo was content to walk along and listen and forget, for a while, the horrors behind them and the dangers ahead. The Company seemed more at ease now after leaving Beorn’s than they were before arriving there, comradely and cheerful as they had been at the beginning of their quest. It was only Gandalf, walking along with them like a grey shadow, whose silence indicated that their joviality would be of short duration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I hope you all enjoyed the Necessary Backstory. Necessary for Bilbo, anyway, leave it to the dwarves to save *actually* telling him the things he relates in the VO prologue until the beginning of (what will be) the second movie ;-) Also, is it just me, or is fed!rested!hydrated!Thorin actually the best Thorin? Lookit him being an adult! 'Hey, Balin, could you talk about that triggering topic further away? Thanks!' rather than 'ARGH ELVES!' I'm so proud!


	32. Chapter 32

When the Company set forth on the path through what was once Greenwood the Great, it was immediately evident to all of them why it went by a new name in these latter days. The forest was so thickly blanketed over with dark moss and twisting thickets, the path they had been told not to stray from was almost impossible to see. Before long, they could no longer tell what hour it was; the trees were so high and their leaves so heavily overgrown that they obscured the sun entirely, leaving the forest in a constant state of gloomy half-light, even when they were sure it must be midday.

The wind was the only way they could tell night from day there, when evening fell it picked up, cold and wet, leaving their socks damp in their boots and the tips of their fingers numb among those who neglected to wear gloves.

Every dwarfling heard tales of fae-folk who roamed dark forests, intent upon making mischief with any child who wandered far from the safety of their homes. These cautionary tales were re-told generation to generation by parents who wanted their children to mind and elder siblings who thought spooking their young brothers, sisters and cousins would be just the thing to do before bedtime.

The stories, songs and poems were the same and each member of the Company who walked the path through Mirkwood had some verse or couplet running through their mind. The wind howling through the trees called to mind haunting lullabies. The hooting of owls sounded uncannily like laughter.

_Come away, oh, little child!_  
 _To the waters and the wild_  
 _With a faery, hand in hand_  
 _For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand._

Dís felt a shudder run up her back when she heard a musical sound just above her ear and it took a few heart-pounding seconds before she realized that it was only Dwalin, humming. “You know how to fright a girl, don’t you?” she muttered. “Giving me gooseflesh and all.”

“Didn’t think my voice was so bad as all that,” he replied teasingly and smiled at her.

“It’s a queer sort of tune you got to chanting,” Dís told him, edging slightly closer for warmth; she did not take his arm as they walked, but it was a near thing. “What was that, anyway?”

Dwalin shrugged, his arm brushing against her, axes upon his back knocking together. The sound was a homey comfort and seemed to chase some of the darkness and uncertainty away. “Faeries, dancing, losing your soul, seemed fitting.”

“Oh, of course,” she rolled her eyes. “Couldn’t whistle something merry, could you? Make the walking seem warmer.”

There was precious little chance of that, even if Dwalin sang the gayest tune he knew at the top of his voice. The rations they acquired from Beorn were fast dwindling and they were taking especial care with the water, since he said the brackish streams and little brooks they passed on their way were unsafe for consumption. The limited foodstuffs and long, dark hours conspired to make them all gloomy. To add insult to injury, their wizard abandoned them a scant few miles into the forest proper.

Their parting had been swift, but not sweet. Thorin was uncommunicative and churlish for hours afterward, though no one held him accountable for Gandalf’s sudden, but all too common disappearance.

“He’s a wizard,” Bofur shrugged with a small half-smile. “He does as he chooses.”

That comment did not go over well with Thorin who turned away from the well intentioned miner and pressed onward into the dark. Not even his nephews managed to coax a smile from him that day and Dís was forced to conclude that her brother’s better nature would once again be stifled beneath the ill-humor he wore heavy on his shoulders like armor.

Where Gandalf had ventured off to was a mystery to them. When Bilbo tentatively inquired where he was going, he only replied, “Away.”

“And why are you going away?” the hobbit asked, impatience and hunger giving his voice a bite it ordinarily lacked.

“To see. Or not to see, which I would prefer,” he said and was gone, his only words of farewell taking the form of a warning not to stray from the path.

And they had not, though for stretches the path was difficult to separate from the forest itself. Vines seemed to curl and grasp at their ankles every step, twisting and twining their way around their bootlaces; more than once they had to take a knife to the forest floor to free a trapped companion and Dori took to carrying Bilbo upon his back more than once when the way got too tangled. Cobwebs, more like ropes than spider silk, dangled from the trees and the Company always grasped their knives and swords a little tighter when they saw them.

“Has it always been this dreadful?” Bilbo asked Balin when they embarked upon a spot of ground that was clear enough to walk upon.

Glancing around at the eerie, overgrown forest, Balin could only shake his head, “I ventured into Greenwood only a few times before...well. The journey was easier, I’ll tell you that, but then we had mounts and guides who knew the way.”

Bilbo nodded, but the dwarves knew that Balin meant more than he spoke. In the days of old King Thrór when they enjoyed a strained, but cordial relationship with the Elves of Greenwood, it had been a very different world indeed.

“They’ve gotten lazy,” Dori remarked rudely. “That they won’t keep their roads up, it’s inconsiderate to travelers.”

“They likely don’t want travelers journeying through,” Dwalin reminded him. He had never set foot in the Greenwood when he was a stripling and never after the Mountain fell. Why would they ever journey through a land where their miseries would be ignored? The slights of Men they could bear, but those of their former allies stung the most and the worst part was, they could not raise an army and make them give answer for the insult.

In their darkest moments, the exiles of Erebor fantasized about bloody revenge. One Elf slain for every five dwarves left to perish seemed about right. Let them look upon the broken, burned and twisted bodies of their family and friends and then see if they could turn their pale faces away from the slaughter as impassively as they had when they watched Erebor burn.

But they were warriors, not murderers and their numbers were too few to take revenge. Instead they turned their faces away from Greenwood and let resentment build in their hearts. Now, a Company of only fifteen souls, they could not risk open assault or even detection and so, despite the difficulty, they remained upon the path.

Until the path abruptly stopped at a stream of water, quick-moving and black as ink, even where it lapped upon the shore. Too wide to leap across and there were no stones to use to ease the way.

Unsurprisingly, it was Glóin who threw his hands in the air in disgust and made his complaints to the leaves overhead. “Follow the path, he says!” he shouted loud enough to rattle the spindly trees around them. Whether he was talking about Beorn or Gandalf was unclear and none thought to ask him to clarify. “We’ve followed the thrice-damned path for nigh on a _week_ and here’s where it leads? A curse on ‘em both, a curse on both their beards - ”

“So, what now?” Nori asked Thorin, folding his arms and arching one of his eyebrows. “We’ve got to stray from the path, haven’t we? See if there’s a way round. I’ll tell you now, there’s no way I’m putting a toe in _that_ , not for all the gold in Erebor.”

“There’s a boat.”

Thorin ran a hand through his hair, exhaling hard through his nose like a bull ready to charge. “I suppose we must,” he said, damning Gandalf and Beorn in his mind just as heartily as Glóin had been doing with his voice moments before. “The Maker alone knows how long this goes on.”

“Ha!” Dís rolled her eyes and folded her arms. “I don’t think even He could see through all this wood, not unless He sent a spark down and burned the whole thing to a cinder.”

“There _is_ a boat - ”

“Oh,” Bombur sighed heavily. “That’s a blessing too dear to hope for.”

“A- _hem_!” Bilbo cleared his throat loudly enough that the Company heard him over their grousing. With all eyes on him, he flushed in annoyance and stammered, “There is. As I said. A boat.” And he pointed to a little craft, big enough for one average-sized Man or two dwarrows of middling build.

It was moored against the other side of the river, bobbing gently in the current. Far from looking pleased at the discovery, most of the Company pursed their lips and a few scowled outright.

“I don’t like it,” Dwalin declared and Óin echoed the sentiment.

“S’awfully queer,” he growled, glaring at the boat as though it had paid him personal insult. “Just left there, waiting. Could be a trap”

Bilbo could not see what the matter was. “I’m sure I don’t see how it could be a danger,” he huffed. “It seems perfectly ordinary to me, especially since this is likely the stream Beorn warned us against, it seems whoever’s been here before has taken all the proper precautions and we’d do well to follow their example.”

“But _whose_ example?” Thorin muttered to himself.

“I thought hobbits didn’t go in for sailing,” Fíli remarked, more loudly than his uncle.

“We don’t,” Bilbo said firmly. “But we like swimming even less and swimming in enchanted streams least of all.”

The eyes of the Company fell upon Thorin. None wished to take their chances in the water, which boasted a silvery sheen upon its dark surface though there was no moon visible through the canopy. Neither did they wish to stray from the path and take their chances in the Elvenking’s dark domain. Yet to trust a boat of uncertain origin got their hackles up; they remembered the songs. A gift from an unknown source in times of peril always came with a price.

“We’ll have to chance it,” Thorin said at last, the words coming out short and clipped; he did not like this plan better than his companions who sagged and nodded glumly at the confirmation of their course.

“I can fray it,” Kíli said, drawing an arrow from his quiver, but Thorin raised a hand and stopped him.

“Don’t waste arrows,” he advised. “For I’m not diving into that muck to fetch them for you. Anyone got a knife they don’t mind losing?”

“Ah, you’d not lose it,” Dís said, licking her lips and judging the distance from the shore to the place where the boat was moored. “Who wants to take a bet that I get it in one?”

It was a sign of how uneasy they all were that no one took her up on it. Bifur stepped forward though and removed a thick bladed hunting knife from his belt and presented the handle toward her. There was something inscribed upon the hilt, Dís felt the carving with her thumb and her eyes went wide after a second and she lost some of her bravado.

“I can’t - ” she began, but Bifur shook his head and leaned close to whisper something in her ear.

**“I trust you. Let those sharp eyes of yours be put to good work. Let it not be said that I doubt my lady’s skill.”**

Dís grinned at him despite herself. “You’re too charming by half,” she said and took a firmer grip upon the knife’s handle, testing its weight.

“Have we still got a grappling hook?” Thorin asked, and Nori nodded, unwinding a length of rope with a thick clawed hook from where it had been coiled around his shoulder.

“Ready and waiting,” he said, winking at Dís. “Don’t cock it up, now.”

“Shut up,” she said and that was the last thing she said before she planted her feet upon the shoreline, studied the bobbing of the boat in the water for a moment before she let the blade fly from her hand. It severed the thin rope neatly in one blow and immediately the boat drifted away from its moorings, freed with the tip of the blade embedded in the wooden hull.

There was no time for cheering, but Fíli and Kíli both thumped their mother hard on the back and grinned broadly. “All those rounds of darts in the pub come in handy, eh, Mam?” Fíli remarked proudly.

Dís hardly had time to grin back for Nori threw the hook toward the boat and missed completely; the hook landed in the water with a splash. “Someone should have spent less time sleeping in troll caves and more time in the village,” she groaned as Nori reeled the hook back toward him, cursing colorfully.

“Careful!” Dori shouted, slapping his brother’s hands so hard he dropped the rope completely.

Nori looked furious. “What’d you go and do that for?” he demanded. The boat was drifting further and further away from them with every passing second. He bent to retrieve the hook, but Dori batted at his hands again.

“You aren’t wearing gloves,” he pointed out, exasperated. “I don’t want you touching that water without gloves on.”

“I can’t hardly think a few drops’ll do me harm!”

“You never think _anything_ will do you harm! That’s how we’ve got to this point, isn’t it?”

“Wasting time, all you ever do is waste time, save your breath to cool your porridge, you bellows!”

While the two brothers argued, Ori slipped between them. His mittens were of tight weave and before anyone could stop him he tossed the hook toward the boat once more. It sailed in a graceful arc and latched onto the wood most obligingly. “It’s alright,” he said, giving the rope a tug so that the boat coasted swiftly to them.

Balin smiled and pat him on the arm, taking up the rope as well and making short work of the task. “Well done,” he said approvingly while Dori and Nori were too caught up in staring at their little brother with open mouths to speak.

It was a very small little craft, all things considered and they could only ride two at a time; even then it was a tight fit and they risked jabbing one another in the elbows with every stroke of the oars. Still, they would bear the discomfort for a swift crossing. Bombur volunteered to go last of all, with their supply packs.

“Are you sure?” Thorin asked, before he clambered in with Fíli.

Bombur nodded agreeably, “No trouble - anyway, I pity whoever it’d be as had to ride two abreast with _me.”_

“Oh, no doubt it’d make a cozy crossing,” Dís joked, second to cross with Kíli. “I’m jealous of the rations.”

Thorin gave Bombur a rough pat on the arm before gingerly stepping into the boat and taking up an oar, taking care to only touch the top of the wooden instrument with his bare fingers. The rest of the Company followed suit and made their way across the unsettling stream without incident; Dís made certain to return Bifur's knife safely to its owner. When it was Bombur’s turn to join them, no one marked his passage. None except Bofur who let out a cry that coincided with almighty splash.

All at once there was a great flurry of activity to pull Bombur from the water; luckily, he had fallen in close to shore and the dwarves nearest him seized his clothing and his arms, heedless of the danger to themselves until they were assured that he was dragged to safety, then they hastily scrubbed their hands dry on their coats. None of them who had been splashed suffered any ill-effects. Only Bombur, soaked from head to foot, lay upon the shoreline unmoving. It was only from the steady rise and fall of his chest that they knew he was not dead.

Bofur was beside himself, he fell to his knees at Bombur’s side, hands hovering uselessly over his brother while Bifur peered down over his shoulder, anxious. They did not need to speak a word to Óin, the healer was at Bombur’s other side in an instant, his hands at his neck, taking his pulse.

“Damn this light,” he grumbled to hide his panic. After a few heart-pounding seconds slipped by, he let out a sigh and shook his head, looking at Bofur and Bifur with a peeved expression. “He’s asleep. It’s got to be some sort of...spell, if he didn’t wake after all that scrambling and shouting.”

“Bombur can sleep through a rockslide,” Bofur said, taking one of his brother’s hands between both of his and bellowing in his ear. “Come along, now! Got us all on pins and needles, you! Enough of this, get up now!” When Bombur did not budge, not even to flutter an eyelash, Bofur’s shouts became more desperate. “Bombur, please, got us all scared, you have, can’t you just...just...”

Bifur put a hand on Bofur’s shoulder and gently urged him away; the tips of Bombur’s fingers were going purple due to his brother’s squeezing. Bofur threw his arms around Bifur's neck and buried his face in his coat; he made no sound, but it was evident by his shaking shoulders that he was crying. The rest of the Company could only look around at one another, grieved and horrified in turns. Bombur was a dear friend to them all, kindly and sweet. If there was any justice in the world, no bad thing ought to befall him the whole of his life until he died at the ripe old age of three-hundred and thirty surrounded by no fewer than fifty grandchildren.

But the world was not a fair place and so he lay, insensible, upon a forest floor in the middle of nowhere. Thorin stepped forward, then, and spoke. “We’ll bed down here for the night. What are the odds the enchantment’ll lift by morning?”

“I’m a healer, not a conjurer,” Óin sighed, heaving himself to his feet. “Might do. Or it might linger on until some damned foolish requirement to break the curse is met.”

“Kiss from a maiden fair,” Nori spoke up, eager to tell a joke and have the tension cut; he had never seen Bofur look so devastated in all his life and it unnerved him. “S’what it says in the stories they tell in Mannish towns. Go on Dís, you’re the only lass we’ve got, might as well give it a try.”

“Absolutely _not_ ,” Óin glared and Dís hit Nori sharply about the head for his cheek.

“This isn’t funny,” she snapped and he frowned, but did not reply with any smart remark.

“And it might be dangerous for her as well,” Óin added, peeling his gloves off and laying them upon a nearby stone to dry. “No telling if that enchantment in the water lingers on afterwards. No one’s to touch him without gloves on and if he needs looking after in the days to come we’ll have to do it in turns.” Looking up at Thorin he added, “If that’s what we’re to do.”

There was no hesitation as their King nodded once, “We’ll make a litter if we must, no one will be left behind. Make ready for bed; if luck is on our side, he’ll be back to himself when we wake.”

Thorin spoke not a word about preparing for supper and not one of them mentioned it; they all knew, but did not remark on the fact that most of their rations were lost when the boat capsized.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm 100% sure the movie will act like Bombur falling in the enchanted river is HILARIOUS, but all I'm going to be thinking is, "My poor baby!" The poem quoted in this chapter was "The Stolen Child" by Yeats.


	33. Chapter 33

The next morning there was no improvement in Bombur's state, his hazel eyes remained closed, but the steady rise and fall of his chest indicated that he still lived. Once Óin had gone to bed, Bofur wasted no time ignoring his stricture against touching Bombur until every trace of water was gone. He spent the night curled up at his brother’s side, one arm over his chest so that if his breath faltered for an instant, he would know.

Bofur slept lightly that night, every chirping cricket and snapping twig drove him to wakefulness and it was with bleary red eyes that he was shaken awake by Bifur, who had not slept much either. 

Rather than lying at Bombur’s side, Bifur dedicated himself to industry, crafting a litter of sorts that could be used to carry Bombur along the path. Unlike his younger cousin, he had little optimism that all would be well come morning - or what passed for morning in the ever-present darkness of Mirkwood. 

“Well-crafted,” Balin remarked with quiet approval upon waking and seeing the stretcher laid out upon the dew-soaked ground. “And so quickly. Remarkable.”

“You didn’t have to do this on your own,” Thorin muttered to Bifur, rising from his own resting place with a frown. “Any one of us would have assisted you.”

Despite the residual effects of the axe wound, Bifur was eloquent enough among his own people. When he was well enough for speech, his Khuzdul was clear and beautiful. On days when he could not speak fluently or there were too many outsiders about he signed. Rare were the days when he was so unwell in mind or body that he could do neither, but today seemed to be one of them. Looking past Thorin rather than directly at him, he shrugged into the darkness and shuffled away to Bombur’s side, kneeling and looking at him as intently as Bofur was. 

They took no breakfast that morning and no one said a word about it. No one spoke much of anything, Bombur’s accident and Bofur’s subsequent tears sapped any cheer from them, but there was no time to grieve or to take the precaution of waiting to see if Bombur would soon rise. They had to press on.

The Company only became animated and something more like themselves once again when Thorin asked who among them wanted to be the first to carry Bombur through the forest. Fíli and Kíli were the first, scrambling to take a place at either side of the litter. 

“Cat and Bili would kill us if we didn’t help,” Kíli said in reference to Bilfur and Catla, Bombur’s eldest children and their particular friends.

“Cat would kill us,” Fíli corrected him. “Bili would just never speak to us again.”

“Can’t have that, can we?” their mother replied, getting in line behind Fíli, opposite Bofur who walked forward with nary a word nor an upward glance. Glóin and Dori took up the rear, with some vague words about switching off at noontime. It would give them a reason to take a rest midway through the day, for, rations being so low, they could not stop to eat.

Óin took a tally of their provisions in the night and delivered his dismal findings to Thorin. If they took only one or two meagre meals a day, they had rations enough to last them a week, maybe two if they skipped days. Their leader had been expecting dismal news, but nothing ever prepared one for the reality of imminent starvation. Thorin’s impassive facade broke, for an instant, his mouth parted and his shoulders slumped, but just as quickly as he bent, he straightened again and gave Óin a brisk nod. The healer nodded in return and reached out to give Thorin’s shoulder a very brief pat. A paltry offer of comfort for a heartbreaking disappointment. 

They stopped only to rest at midday and it was not long before they were once again on their feet, trudging through the underbrush. No one said a word, not even to complain. Whatever was on their minds, Bombur, the darkness, the low rations, stoppered their tongues and strangled what words they might have spoken in their throats. A suitable bedding down place was found and then the sacks that held the last of the hard biscuits and honey cakes were opened as everyone took a swill from the water skins. 

Óin was mixing the contents of one of this skins with the honey he saved for medicinal purposes. “For Bombur,” he said after receiving several curious looks. “He’ll need to take something in, even in that state.”

They had been given one cake apiece, all save Bofur who sat down beside his brother when they stopped to rest and hadn’t moved, not even to eat. When Óin made to bring the mixture of honey and water to Bofur, Dís got up to take the bottle from his hands. Before she rose, she broke her honey cake into two neat halves and handed them to her sons

“Aren’t you hungry?” Fíli asked, looking down at his piece; Kíli devoured his half and only looked up when the dismay in his brother’s voice indicated that perhaps he shouldn’t have been so quick to take the food. “You haven’t eaten in - Mam, you must be _starving_.”

“I’m not,” Dís said, ruffling his hair carelessly as walked toward Óin who handed the bottle to her without a word. His eyes held their misgivings, but she spoke truth. She was not starving; she’d starved before and knew the feel of it, the light-headed, empty-bellied ache that never went away, the sleepiness without being able to get a moment’s rest. She was hungry, of course she was, but not starving. Not yet. 

“But Mam - ” Fíli called after her, but she was already walking away with quick strides.

“Eat your supper, love.”

Dry leaves crackled and rustled beneath her boots and Bofur looked up as she drew near, wordlessly reaching for the bottle, but she only held it tighter to her chest. “I’ll take the watch,” she said gently, sitting down on Bombur’s other side and uncorking the bottle. 

“Don’t bother,” his voice was like a plea. “I know what to do, I’ve done this afore, when Bifur - ”

“Aye, so have I,” she replied steadily, looking Bofur right in the eye. She tilted Bombur’s head and shoulders up on her knees so he wouldn’t choke when she dribbled water into his mouth. A few drops to wet his tongue; a few more to coax him to swallow. “My mother.”

There was little else to say. In public, it was known that Freya died of a wasting illness and at her funeral, all the appropriate condolences were offered. But Freya, Queen-in-Exile was a dwarf grown. Grown dwarves did not die of illness, not mortal afflictions that beset Men and left their chests rattling with coughs and spotted their handkerchiefs with blood. Yet dead she was, all the same, no matter what her children did to prolong her life.

Her mother could be cold. Toward the end especially she could be cruel. But she was their mother. They loved her and they’d lost so much already. Was it any wonder that her dutiful children bathed her brow with a cool cloth and poured spoonfuls of broth down her throat to the end? 

What had beset Bombur was no mortal affliction, but he would wake, he must, he _had_ to. He had something to live for, after all. Freya was convinced that all her hopes died at the gate of Moria. 

“Go on,” Dís nodded toward the camp. “Eat something, drink something at least.”

“I don’t want to leave him,” Bofur said softly, one of his brother’s hands limply held in his own. 

Dís looked him square in the eye and promised, “If anything changes, for good or ill, I’ll call for you; I’ll scream for you.”

Bofur hesitated, waffling indecisively, then nodding at last. He trusted Dís and, in the end, it all came down to trust. Rising shakily to his feet, he turned to go, but then knelt again, pressing a kiss to his brother’s smooth, unresponsive brow. 

“I swore I’d not let nothing happen to him,” he said, a sob lurking in the back of his mouth. “He-he’s me brother and after me Ma and Da...after Bifur...after _Víli_ , s’too much. It really is.”

“I know,” Dís nodded sincerely, reaching out and squeezing Bofur’s arm with all the tenderness in the world. “I know.”

Bofur pressed her hand where it lay on his arm, then took up her hand and kissed her fingers. “You do,” he agreed, wiping a tear from his eye before it fell. “Poor lass.”

Dís went back to tending to Bombur and did not look up from her task until Bofur’s dragging footfalls were well enough away from her that she could wipe her own tears away without being seen crying. A drop of the sweet water leaked out of the corner of Bombur’s open mouth; she sopped it up with her sleeve. “Come on now,” she said quietly. “Enough of this, eh? Where’s my uncanny Broadbeam, then? Made of granite and steel, you are. Strong enough to shake off any stupid enchantment.”

It felt ridiculous, talking to him as if he could hear her. She never talked to the dead, though she knew many did. They prayed to their ancestors, swore upon their hands, beards and axes and she supposed she did as well, to keep the custom, but she was sure not a one of them could hear her in the Halls of Waiting. Even if there was some vast chamber with glassy pools that showed the world of the living to those in the land of the dead, she was sure her forebears would have shielded their eyes and turned their heads away so as not to see what had become of their offspring. 

But Bombur was not dead. His head and shoulders were warming her legs even as they went numb from the weight. And if there was the smallest chance that he could hear her, she thought she might as well take it. “I made Thyra a promise, after all,” she said, voice hitching when she thought of Thyra, her soft, enveloping arms and lips upon her cheek. 

Round-faced and cheerful, when last she’d seen her she was pale beneath her freckles. _“You take care of ‘em, you hear? I want a raven a week telling me you’re safe and sound every step of the way.”_

No ravens had come, what could she be thinking? That they’d perished, maybe. And what was she telling her children? That Missus Dís went away with Da and Uncle Bofur and cousin Bifur and they’d now never see them again?

“I’ll bet you anything she’s sitting ‘fore the fire right now, fretting about the lot of us,” she continued. “And your Bili’s whinging that he ought to have come and little Cat’s shouting him down, saying as _she’s_ the better marksman. Lúfi, sweet lad he is, probably telling her not to be so _loud_ , she’ll wake the baby, and of course, Cat either can’t hear him or doesn’t care. I don’t know how you came by that lass - love her dearly, but she’s tough as nails, that one.”

Bilfur and Catla offered to go abroad and they were both of age, but their mother needed them at home and so home they were. Tucked in their cozy, overstuffed apartment above her family’s bake shop that always smelled of fresh bread. Thinking of the bakery made Dís’s stomach growl and she quickly diverted her thoughts to the children once more. 

“And you know Gimli’s still in a strop, he and Alfur shouting to the Maker above about how unfair it all is. And Lú trying to calm them too,” she smiled at the memory of the nervous young dwarrow with the wheat-blond hair and watery blue eyes. “Comes of having so many brothers and sisters, mayhap? Poor lad wants a bit of quiet. Like...like his Da, hmm?” 

They were careful as they could be carrying him, while still keeping up a reasonable pace, but stray leaves and twigs caught and snapped off in his hair and beard regardless. Dís resolved to pick them out once the bottle she held was empty.

“Me,” she continued, as if it was a normal conversation on a long summer evening. It might well have been. Bombur wasn’t much of a talker, but he was a damned fine listener. “I hate the quiet, always have. Doesn’t feel right if I haven’t got at least two or more trying to chatter my ears off. Gets lonesome, being left alone with yourself too long - mind, I didn’t used to think so.” 

This time, when some of the contents of the bottle spilled over her fingers she did not wipe it away, but sucked it right off; probably a foolish idea. Took more doing licking the sweet from her hands than it did consuming it; there wasn’t even enough to swallow. 

“You’ll not believe it,” she went on. “When I was a bitty wee thing, I remember sleeping in tents and in the back of wagons and praying the world would just _stop_ for a moment. Go out, like a candle. All the animal noises, guards tromping about, my parents...well, you think _I’m_ mouthy, you should’ve heard them. ‘Tween Frerin’s yammering and Thorin’s snoring, I could hardly hear myself think most nights.”

The bottle was empty. She corked and pocketed it; she never wasted a thing. “Got used to it soon enough, a body can get used to anything, if it must. Well. Almost anything.” 

Deprivation, yes. Hunger, with difficulty. Sorrow, though, loss? Her spirit bucked and writhed under those shackles, even now. “And I’ll tell you right now, Bombur of Clan Broadbeam, there’s five-score dwarves who’d never get used to not having _you_ about. Five score dwarves and, if I had any coin left to lay it down, one very fond hobbit who need you to shake this nonsense off, eh? I don’t know where you’ve gone to, but you’ve got to come _back_. And soon. If you haven’t heard a word I’ve said, hear _that.”_

“Dís.”

Thorin was standing a few yards away, hands clasped awkwardly behind his back. He’d shucked his furs, but he wore his coat and armor still. She raised her head and looked, not caring if he’d been standing by dropping eaves. Thorin knew her better than anyone, not a word she’d said was a secret. “Take the bottle back to Óin, I’ll sit with him a while.”

Dís eased Bombur back to lie down upon the forest floor. His eyelashes did not even flutter and her heart sank like a stone. Cocking her head up at Thorin she began to ask, “You don’t need to - ”

“Need to what?” his voice was curiously toneless, like an iron bar pounded flat. “We’ve no food, little water and half our arms and supplies are gone. I’ve nothing - ah.” He paused, looking slightly abashed, as if he’d just remembered something terribly important. Thorin’s unlaced his hands from their position behind his back and held something out to her. Half of his honey cake. 

“Thorin - ” she began, but he held up his other hand to silence her.

“There’s very little to do, as I said,” he interrupted her, haltingly. “Let me do this.”

Dís took the slice of cake, eyeing it curiously. “Who got the other half?” she asked. “Fíli or Kíli?”

“They each got a quarter.”

Dís broke the cake and held one half out to Thorin, dangling the other piece threateningly over the muck at their feet. “Eat it or I’ll drop my bit in the mud where it won’t do anyone any good,” she threatened. Thorin, she suspected, took the piece she offered just to please her; in their state, no doubt one of their companions would wipe the ruined bite of cake off on his trousers and declare it fit for eating.

They chewed a bit longer than necessary, to make it last, then swallowed and looked at one another over Bombur’s supine body. Thorin’s lips thinned; either he was going to frown or say something and Dís was sure that whatever it was, the frown or the words, wouldn’t do either of them a bit of good. Without thinking about it, she closed the short distance between them and threw her arms around her brother’s neck, kissing his cheek. 

“Thanks for the cake,” she whispered, stupidly, she thought. And then broke away, favoring Thorin with a watery smile before she jogged away to rejoin the camp. She was so intent upon her goal, not letting her brother see the tears that threatened in her eyes that she utterly missed the presence of the halfling who hid behind an obliging rock when he saw Thorin offer the last of his rations to his sister.

Bofur had done the same to him. It was an evening of sharing food. Balin tried to force his own portion onto Dwalin who tried to give the extra to Thorin, after he saw him give his own supper to his nephews. At first, Thorin refused, then changed his mind and took the cake, only to offer it to Bofur, who took the cake with muttered thanks and handed it off to Bilbo who still had half of it. It was with only a little guilt that he’d eaten his portion and half of Balin-Dwalin-Thorin-Bofur’s. They were dwarves, Óin explained once, not too patiently. They enjoyed food and drink and preferred to enjoy it several times daily, but they did not _need_ it so often. Their race suffered hardship of the body with greater ease than Men and Elves - and Hobbits.

But for Thorin and his sister to go without seemed a tad extreme and so Bilbo decided that the rest of his rations should go to one of them - since, he was sure, one would be sure that at least half went to the other. Even as the Tookish half of him was determined to stride over to them and make them eat, the Baggins in him sent him scurrying behind a rock, sure they would prefer to be left alone and not bothered by him. That left him in the unenviable position of lurking when all he meant to do was drop off a bit of food.

There was the ring in his pocket; he could sneak off without their being any the wiser, but instead he crouched in the darkness and watched as Thorin settled himself down beside Bombur. He assumed the king meant to keep watch, as he had many nights while the Company slept, but instead he did something rather different; he meticulously removed every stray leaf from Bombur’s hair and beard and fastidiously combed and rebraided the lot. 

“I made her a promise once,” Thorin said and Bilbo was then quite certain he’d crossed the line from _lurking_ to _snooping_ he should definitely be on his way - but he was rooted to the spot, fascinated. “Not one she heard, but when we came to the Ered Luin...I said she’d not go hungry again - more than that. That she’d not _suffer_ again.” With a derisive snort, he muttered, “More fool me.”

It was a bit of a foolish promise, Bilbo thought, but a loving one. 

“You were wise to make yours stay home,” Thorin added quietly. His eyes were on the camp, everyone was gathered close to the small fire. “If I’d been less prideful - less _blind_.” His head fell into his hand and he rubbed his eyes irritatedly, as if he had a headache or as if...as if he was crying. But when Thorin raised his head again, his face seemed dry in the near-blackness. 

Bilbo must have moved them, closer or further away, he didn’t know for Thorin’s head snapped up and his every limb was taut with anticipation, his hand upon the hilt of his sword. “Who’s there?”

“Only me,” Bilbo stepped out from behind his rock with a sheepish wave.

Thorin’s hand left the sword, but his expression darkened. “Did you come to see me weep?” he growled. “To see a king brought low? I’m afraid it’s a common enough sight, the gilt’s worn off _that_ ornament.”

“I didn’t - I don’t,” Bilbo stammered, then straightened up. He had come to pay a kindness after all and Thorin was reacting with scorn. As he always did. But these last few days, since that dreadful encounter on the cliffside, Bilbo was beginning to know that there was more to him than bluster and anger. Much more. “I brought you some cake,” he said, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing the food. 

Thorin did not move to take it, his tone was only slightly less acidic when he said, “I thought halflings were fonder of cake than anything else.”

“So we are,” Bilbo nodded curtly. “And therefore it’s a very great show of...of respect and f-fealty to willingly give it up. And you’ll greatly offend me if you refuse. It will make for an uncomfortable journey, to trek along so many miles with a hungry _and_ offended hobbit.”

Thorin was so still for so long that Bilbo began to feel his cheeks redden as he stood there with his arm outstretched, the cake growing sticky between his fingers. He nearly gave the entire endeavor up as a failure when Thorin reached over and plucked the cake from his hand, breaking it neatly in twain, exactly as Bilbo predicted he would.

“Thank you,” he said simply, chewing the cake slowly and thoughtfully. “I...thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” Bilbo replied cordially. With a graceful incline of his head he turned on his heel and returned to the camp, unable to stop the small, pleased smile that quirked his lips. In addition to nobility, fairness and honor, there was tenderness too, to be found among dwarves. And, if he could manage it, perhaps he would discover that good manners could be taught as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been the first installment of Bilbo's Pixar subplot: How to Train Your Exiled King. Step one - teach him to say 'Thank you.' Step two - Table Manners.


	34. Chapter 34

Six days. It had been six days since Bombur fell in the enchanted stream and still he slumbered on. Six days. They’d only had food enough to last them seven and, as Bilbo reported when he climbed to the top of an oak, they seemed to be no closer to leaving the forest. The only spot of light they’d had at all were from the white tails of a family of deer that wandered into their midst. Kíli lost half his quiver in the getting off them, but they were too fast and he was so tired and hungry he could hardly see straight. It spoke volumes about how dismal their situation was that Thorin did not swear or scold him too harshly for his error; the rebuke was a mild one and he only expressed regret for the lost arrows and would not permit Kíli to leave the path and reclaim them.

Their spirits were as low and heavy as their boots dragging over the ground. On and on they plodded, rarely speaking, exhausted, thinking there would be no end to the forest that surrounded them. Balin, acting sensibly as those around them fell into despair ensured them that the forest did end; he had been there before.

Greenwood the Great, they were certain, did end. But this was Mirkwood now and whatever foulness smote the waters and blacked out the sky was strong and it was easy to believe that they were doomed to wander, lost in the wood, for all time. Not just the river was enchanted, the whole place seemed magicked. None of the dwarves spoke of it among themselves, but many was the time they’d bolt upright in the night, sure they’d heard eerie music or phantom laughter that faded away by the time they’d sat up.

It was in this gloom that Fíli found the most unexpected spark of enlightenment. The first glimmer of knowledge came when his mother gave himself and his brother her share of supper. She did it so easily, so unthinkingly that his stomach lurched, despite its emptiness and he realized that she must have done so before. 

"Mam," he ventured as they trudged through the underbrush, their feet heavier and knives slower to cut away at the encroaching forest. "Did you…have you…"

"Out with it, love," she prompted, a touch impatiently. "While you’ve breath enough to speak."

Fíli sidled up alongside her, glancing over his shoulder as he sought out Kíli. His brother was walking along with the others carrying Bombur, sticking close by Ori whose arms seemed about ready to give out though he marched in tandem with the rest of him, spirit not flagging as his body was. “Have you done this before?” he whispered, satisfied his brother was not within earshot. “Gone without? Because...because of us?”

The hand on his chest nearly knocked the wind out of him; for a moment Fíli was confused, he thoughts she’d struck him in anger and his mother _never_ struck him in anger, but then she crouched at his feet and used her knife to cut his boot free of a snaring vine; if she hadn’t stopped him from walking along he would have fallen. 

“Not because of you,” she said when she straightened. Dís put an arm around her sons’s shoulders and tucked him in close to his side, bending her neck to whisper in his ear. “Never _because_ of you, don’t think that for a moment. We went hungry, sometimes, your uncle and I. And aye, we made sure you had enough to get you through the night. But it wasn’t your fault.”

“After...after Da died?” he ventured a guess. Fíli did not remember his father, not really. A wide laughing mouth, a flash of golden hair, strong arms occasionally imposed themselves on his mind, but he did not know if they were memories or memories of memories. Víli was his name. He was a miner, stout and handsome and his mother fell in love with his smile and kindness. When he was small he wanted to go to sea. When he was grown he went to work in the mines and it was the rock that got him in the end. 

His mother nodded, “After that, winter was hard that year. And Kíli was newly born, you were a babe yourself. But we survived, the four of us. All of us - those that remained.”

Remained. How awful to think that those he knew, his family and friends, were the remains of a kingdom. Fíli was not unhappy with his life, he had his family, his chums, his work, but he knew that there was more once. There was a father, once. There were grandparents, cousins, he’d never known and would never know aside from stories. What would his life have been, had he known them? 

A throne seemed a distant aspiration, a mountain with such riches as Erebor boasted even further from his reach. But Fíli could imagine other dwarves, dwarves he had never met, only knew from stories. Memories of memories. and he wondered about them, asked about them as a child until he realized that speaking of them caused his family pain. He stopped asking, but he never stopped wondering. 

What would it have been, if his mother and uncle’s parents had lived? If they had someone looking after them as well as they looked after him and his brother, as well as they looked after each other? If they had someone willing to starve for them? Would his uncle smile more often? Would his mother lose the crease that appeared over her nose when she was lost in thought and didn’t know he could see?

“When did your mother die?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“This is a gloomy chat we’re having,” his mother sighed and he was about to apologize and tell her never to mind, but she went on. “I suppose the scenery’s right for it; it’s a gloomy place we’re in. I was seventy, or thereabouts. We’d been in the Ered Luin for three summers; she died in the winter.”

Fíli drew in a breath sharply and let it out all in a huff. There was an ache in his chest that had nothing to do with hunger. Seventy. Five years younger than Ori was now, still a child by their people’s reckoning. Nearly grown, but _not_ grown. Perhaps it was a sign of his own immaturity, but when Fíli tried to think of life without his mother, without his uncle, he panicked. The thoughts came on more now than they ever had before in his life, they made him place his bedroll beside his mother, as close to Thorin as he dared. 

He was a dwarf grown, a journeyman, able to enter into contracts, marry if he chose. _Inherit a kingdom,_ but the idea of doing any of it without the reassurance of his mother’s guidance and the promise of his uncle’s praise if he did something well made him feel cold and ill. How had they managed it? Going along on their own for so long?

How could he manage it? If their quest was doomed, if...if _he_ was left alone? Again, his eyes sought out Kíli who had taken Ori’s place carrying Bombur. Even when he imagined the unthinkable, life without his mother and uncle, Kíli was there in his mind’s eye, beside him, grieving with him. Fíli was a dwarf who did not remember his father, but also could not recall a time before he had his brother. 

Without warning he remembered the stone giants, his mother’s arms around him tight, her words, _Let him go, you have to let him go._

 _Never,_ he remembered thinking. _Never_

Fílil shivered violently and was pulled even more tightly to his mother’s side, one of her broad hands rubbing vigorously up and down his arm. “Do you want my cloak?” she asked, concerned.

“Nah,” Fíli tried to smile, but it was a wan, pitiful thing. “Just a chill. I’ll be alright.”

She did not ask again, did not insist that he take it as some mothers did; Dís would sacrifice for her sons, but she did not make herself a martyr. But she kept her arm around Fíli’s shoulder as they walked and he leaned into her embrace; without speaking a word, they knew they were each one grateful for the other.

When they prepared to make camp he sought Kíli out and dragged him away from the others, but not so far that they were out of their sight; the forest grew denser and impossibly darker, it would be too easy to get lost now. 

“And good evening to you too,” Kíli smirked - it was a wonder he could still smile, but Fíli didn’t have energy enough to wonder. The look of amusement vanished quickly when Kíli caught the serious expression on his brother’s face. “What? What’s wrong?”

It was a good question. Fíli could not pinpoint why he was so agitated, though he had a thousand reasons. The uncertainty of Bombur’s fate, the hardship of the journey, the bleak forest around them all were reason enough to be upset, but none of them were at the core of his distemper. It was the idea of his mother and uncle refusing the last morsels of food they would have for who knew how long, giving it to him and his brother so _easily_ that made his empty stomach tie itself in knots.

“Do you know what they’ve been doing?” he asked Kíli more angrily than he meant to. “Have you noticed? Or have you been too busy stuffing your gob?”

Looking cross and slightly wounded, Kíli shook off his brother’s hand on his arm and inquired, “Noticed what? And none of us has been stuffing our gobs, I haven’t eaten any more than you have.”

“And we’ve both of us each eaten more than Mam and Uncle Thorin put together,” Fíli said, exasperated. “They’ve been taking half of what they’re given or nothing at all for _us_ \- ”

“I know.”

“ - and we’re out of food and who knows how long we’ll be in this damned forest and they’re going to do it again and ask no thanks, nor - ”

“ _Fíli_ ,” Kíli interrupted him forcefully. “I _know_ , alright? S’not exactly easily missed, them going without.” He hung his head and kicked at a rock idly, it bounced off a tree and disappeared into the dense forest floor. “I’m not _stupid._ They’ve all been doing it, Mister Dori keeps trying to pass his food on to Nori and Ori, Nori won’t take it, they kick up a fuss. Mister Bifur gives his to Mister Bofur who only takes it to pass it on to Bilbo.”

Fíli looked dumbfounded. “But you never said anything.”

“Neither did you,” Kíli pointed out. “What’s there to say? That we won’t take it? Uncle’d shout worse than Mister Dori and Mam’d sit on us and cram it down our throats. Easier to go along.”

Fíli was forced to admit that his brother had a point. That _would_ be the outcome of such a refusal, his mother and uncle could scold and fight louder than Missus Irpa’s sons on their worst days. Yet to sit idly by and do nothing while they suffered - he and Kíli weren’t little dwarflings who couldn’t fend for themselves, they ought to do _something_ for their mother and uncle, but what he didn’t know. 

“‘sides,” Kíli offered sheepishly after a short pause. “I am _starving.”_

“Me too,” Fíli was not too proud to admit. “I just...doesn’t feel right, does it? Taking without giving back.”

“Well, what can we do?” his brother asked him, sounding genuinely curious. “It’s not like I can say, ‘Mam, I’ll fuller that blade for you, if you want to chat with Missus Thyra for a bit.’ Or, ‘Uncle, I’ll fix the window latch, you go on to the pub, I’ll catch up.’”

“Excuse me,” a soft voice behind them made them both spin round, hands on the hilts of their blades, but it was only Bilbo, ankle-deep in the underbrush, looking a little wary.

“You’re a good sneak,” Kíli complimented him sincerely. “Shouldn’t have any trouble getting by that dragon, I’d wager.”

It was on the tip of Fíli’s tongue to point out that his brother didn’t have the eyes or nose of a dragon and it was easy to sneak by him, but he refrained since Bilbo seemed to have something to say. He discovered that it was best, when chatting with the hobbit, to keep his peace until Bilbo had said all he wanted too; too many interruptions and he got flustered or lost his nerve. 

“I just...couldn’t help overhearing,” he said, already on the verge of a massive fluster, judging from how staccato his speech was already. “But...well, I just thought I ought to say - if you want my advice, which you’re under no obligation to heed and if when I’ve said my bit, you want to say, ‘Go away, Bilbo,’ that’s certainly your right, _but_ \- ”

“Go on,” Fíli nodded encouragingly. “We’re listening.”

“I just wanted to say,” Bilbo began again. “That...a thank-you might suffice. I...well, let’s say that from personal experience, I wish I’d said a few more thank-yous to certain individuals who I...I don’t have occasion to speak to anymore. It’s one of those things, you mean to get around to it, you think, ‘Ah, of course, they know I’m grateful, it’s understood,’ and perhaps it is, but...well, a thank-you never goes amiss.”

The brothers looked at one another, bemused. Thank you. It was on the tip of their tongues to reply that of course they thanked their mother and uncle, of course they knew they were grateful - but just as Bilbo said, they realized that as often as they felt gratitude, very rarely did they voice the sentiment aloud.

With a pang of shock, Fíli realized he hadn’t properly thanked his mother for anything since they’d set out on their journey. She was riding South with his uncle to meet with the lords of the other Seven Kingdoms and he and Kíli would be on their own in the trek to the Shire. He’d been meaning to sharpen his swords for half an age, but something always came up. The night before, it was one last night of fun with his friends before he set his mind to the journey. When he woke, trying to drown his headache in stale coffee, he realized that he’d left it too long. The smithy was closed, sold. Either way the journey ended, they wouldn’t need it anymore. 

The idea of trusting his blades to another smithy made his insides twist; they were _his_ weapons, _his_ responsibility and he’d put it off for a few pints of stout and some laughs. Though he was of age, besides Kíli and Ori, he was the youngest of the lot, untested in battle despite the years he’d spent training. Had he ruined his chances of being taken seriously by the others because of this lapse?

Determined to get the metal filed and polished and still return in time to see his mother and uncle off, Fíli made to sneak out of the house, but when he went to retrieve his weapons, he saw that they were - all of them, knives and swords - as keen and shining as they had been when they were new-forged.

It briefly occurred to him that he might have started sleep-smithing, which was disconcerting, but also convenient. It was good work - _too_ good, Fíli was not too proud to admit. Not his own.

“You looked like you could do with a bit of a lie-in this morning.” He spun around and saw his mother in the doorway of his room, smirking at him. “Have at it.”

Rather than collapsing back into his bed, Fíli dropped his swords upon it instead and crossed the room to give her a relieved hug. “ _Thank you,_ Mam,” he sighed, half hanging off her. She shrugged him off and into bed herself.

“You’re very welcome - I’m not making a habit of it, mind,” she said, sheathing the weapons to ensure that he didn’t roll over and stab himself in his sleep. “Wanted to get one last task in while the place was still ours.”

 _Ours._ Their forge was sold, their apartment being rented to another family. What did they have left that was their own.

Fíli glanced over at his brother who was looking back at their camp with an eager expression on his face. Kíli realized it, Fíli knew, a second before he did.

Each other. They had each other. 

The young dwarves nodded to Bilbo once in tandem before they rejoined the group. Their mother and uncle were sharing the same waterskin, which was immediately held out for the boys to take as they drew near. 

“Thank you,” Kíli said, probably too solemnly for their mother’s brow wrinkled in concern and their uncle’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. Fíli did not manage to stop himself groaning and Kíli blanched. “Not for the water! Not _just_ for the water. For...well the water, too, but more than that, thank you - ”

“For everything,” Fíli finished for him, feeling a little foolish, but looking very sincerely up into his mother and uncle’s eyes. “We just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done. Everything you’ve ever done.”

“Right,” Kíli nodded. “Thank you for always and everything.”

“Always and everything,” Fíli echoed. 

Their mother’s mouth turned down suddenly and her sons glanced at each other, briefly alarmed. Was she going to shout at them? Then they were crushed to her in a bone-crunching hug as she sniffed once, muttering, “Oh, my sweet boys.” 

Even the King their Uncle looked moved. He opened his mouth once, hand rising once Dís released them, as though to clap them on the back, but he paused. Then he seemed to make a decision, for he raised his other arm and waved them over, “Come here.”

Despite being nearly grown, the two of them somehow still fit in their uncle’s arms very neatly. He inclined his head and pressed their brows together, speaking low and slowly. “You’re good lads, both of you. It’s been...an honor to raise you up. I couldn’t be prouder of either of you.”

A nearby cry startled them enough that they looked up, but did not break away from each other. that only happened when there was a noise that had not been heard in four days together: Bofur’s laughter. 

“He’s awake!” he cried happily, laughing, throwing himself on Bombur and kissing him over and over on the forehead and cheeks. “He’s fine - you are, aren’t you, me lad?”

Everyone ran at once to Bombur’s side, clustering close even as Óin snapped at them all to give the boy some _air_ , for Durin’s sake.

“Fine,” Bombur nodded dizzily, his voice rough and croaky from disuse, but his eyes were open and he was sitting up - Bofur’s arms were tight around his shoulders, he probably couldn’t lay back down or rise if he tried, but he was awake, blinking blearily at them all. “Just fine - where are we?”

 **“You do not remember?”** Bifur forgot himself entirely and knelt beside his cousin, resting a hand upon the back of his neck in concern. He spoke little on the quest, loathe as any Dwarf to give voice to their sacred tongue in the presence of an outsider, but now his dark eyes shone with worry as he looked urgently into Bombur’s face.

“I remember we come into the forest,” he began slowly. “And there was a stream o’water, brackish we wasn’t sure how to cross, then...that’d be all. That’s the last I remember.”

“We’re still in the forest,” Nori told him. “Not much to say, truth be told you haven’t missed much. And your way through was much pleasanter than ours, but you’ll be suffering along with the rest of us, now you can walk on your own two feet.”

“What?” Bombur asked, confused.

“You’ve been asleep,” Óin said bluntly. “For nigh on a week, we’ve got you through the wood. It was a powerful enchantment from that water - you remember any of it, laddie? Anything at all?”

Bombur shook his head, harder this time, as if he was trying to loosen a memory that had gotten wedged in somewhere and was stuck. “Nah,” he said at last. “Nothing that wants telling ‘less you’re of a mind to listen to a recitation of strange dreams.”

Óin was looking at Bombur so closely that he flushed faintly in the darkness. “Dreams?” he prompted, leaning in very near so he could catch every word the other dwarf spoke.

“Wasn’t nothing, I’m sure,” Bombur said immediately. “Queer nonsense...mostly…fire, mostly. Music. A feast.”

The whole Company groaned aloud and Óin stood up with a grim nod, “I’d rather you kept those dreams to yourself, if it’s all the same to you. _That’s_ a word I’d not like to hear again unless we come across a pack of deer that won’t startle at Kíli’s sloppy marksmanship.”

They all had a good laugh at that, though it wasn’t funny. Bombur’s waking lifted their spirits higher than they had been in days, but they soon grew grim faced again as the last of the rations were passed around. Bombur took his small portion without a word of fuss, regardless of the fact that he had nothing but sweetened water poured down his gullet since they began their trek through Mirkwood. 

Dís ate half her share and passed the rest on to Kíli who hesitated for the merest moment before taking the hard little cake and thanking her quietly. Nearby, she saw Thorin doing the same with Fíli and she let out a long breath. What good boys they were, she reflected. And what awful days they now had to look forward to.

She took herself a little way away from the group and sat beneath a tree, staring at nothing, trying to think of nothing, but that was impossible. Memories, unthought of for months at a time, bubbled up unbidden from the back of her mind. Times of hunger and thirst, her throat dry and swollen; her stomach felt small and twisted, the ever-present pain one of a thousand little aches she endured by day that left her sobbing without tears in her bed at night. 

Dís wondered if her parents heard her; they’d never come to her. They never came to the tent she shared with her brothers except to wake them or scold them. At the time she thought them apathetic, sometimes cruel, but now she wondered if she had not been unfair in her judgment. They might not have come because they did not care. They might not have come because they were more pained by the sight of their children’s suffering than they could bear. Both her mother and father had been practical dwarves, more practical than she. Why attempt to comfort their children when they could not even feed them?

Dwalin happened upon her solitude, sitting down beside her without asking if she wanted company and holding something out to her. It was a piece of his own cake, small in his large hands. “Go on,” he said, following her gaze when she instinctively sought out Thorin. “He’s been taken care of.”

Indeed he had been; Balin was beside him with his own hand outstretched and Thorin was himself looking at her. Dís managed a smile for him, and a wave. She took the cake from Dwalin and said, “Thank you. For everything.”

“It’s a night for that, is it?” he asked, mouth turning up into that crooked little half-smile that she loved so much. “And do we embrace now?”

“‘Course we do,” Dís said promptly, getting up on her knees and throwing her arms around Dwalin, burying her face in the fur at his shoulder. “Any time you want.”

“Nah,” he countered, speaking the words quietly into her hair. “Not any time. Never get a thing done.”

Dís closed her eyes and reveled in the feeling of being in his arms. It had always been this way with Dwalin, big steady Dwalin whose arms could shield her from the worst of the world. As it was with her brother, being with Dwalin meant she was safe, always. Dwalin was safety and protection and the closest she had ever come to being home. “It’s going to get worse, isn’t it?” she whispered, afraid.

“Might do,” he replied, one of his thumbs stroking her waist, though she could not feel it beneath her armor. “Nothing for it. Got each other, eh? That’s something.”

He pulled back and kissed her brow chastely. Dís smiled at him and took his hand, fingers falling in along the patches of skin between the leather and metal of his knuckledusters. “So we have,” she said and concluded that her initial judgment of her parents was correct. They did not have food to give, but they might have given of themselves, their bodies, their voices. They did not, they chose not to give what little they had of comfort to their children. And that was cruelty.

None of the dwarves she kept company with now had ever been cruel, not to her, not once in their lives. Thoughtless, perhaps. Short-tempered, certainly. Hard to get on with, stubborn, whinging, frustrating, enraging, oh, aye, each and every one of them. But never cruel. They were a remarkable lot, Dís felt privileged to know them and the one whose hand she held, who could offer her nothing now but the comfort of his touch, his voice, _himself_ \- he was one of the best souls she had ever known.

They slept again, weary, hungry and afraid. Dís made her bed between Fíli and Kíli, their little group bookended by Thorin and Dwalin. No one postured now, no one lay their heads upon their cloaks as far from their kinfolk as they could without actually being out of reach. They were beyond that, Bofur slept flush up against his brother’s side, Bifur on Bombur’s other side, Bilbo tucked right up close to the three of them. Even their halfling burglar was not set apart from the group anymore. 

All they had from this point on was one another and it was with that uneasy thought that Dís sank into fretful slumber, drifting off upon damp, cold ground. 

She woke to fire.

There was an awful burning, stinging pain in her arm, the crook of her elbow, unprotected by her armor and vambrace. Dís’s eyes flew open and eight wet, glistening onyxes glittered and bore down on her, there was a terrible clicking all around, rasping breaths. She tried to raise her arms, to draw her sword, but the fire in her blood burned hot, _so_ hot. Before she could draw breath to raise an alarm, to warn them, her vision went white and she fell, lifeless, to the forest floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate spiders, you guys. SO MUCH.


	35. Chapter 35

Dís thought the pains of childbed were the worst a body could experience without losing a limb or something vital. She was wrong. When she birthed her sons, she ached and bled for days on end, but she could speak, she could rest. Now she drifted in a horrible haze that stung like nettles and burned like fire as though all the hurts that had even been visited upon her were stored up in her spleen and bled out through her veins, destroying her from the inside.

There were periods of long darkness broken here and there by cries of a voice, far away, _Attercop! Attercop!_ and an awful hissing clicking in response. Often, she heard nothing at all but the sound of the blood pounding in her ears. It never occurred to her in these moments that she might die. She was insensible even to the fear of death.

When a knife blade sliced through the sticky white, tough as coils of rope and caught her cheek, Dís did not even flinch.

“Oh, _shite,_ sorry, namad, sorry, sorry!”

When Dís did not smile to reassure Nori that she was not annoyed nor swipe at him to show that she was, he panicked. “Thorin!” he shouted. “Óin!”

Dís tried to speak, tell him that she was fine, but her tongue was numb and all she could do was blink sluggishly up at Nori’s blurred, panicked outline. Her thoughts moved slowly, as if caught in sludge and her limbs would not move at all, no matter how fervently she tried to wiggle even a finger.

“S’hands,” Thorin breathed, dropping to his knees beside his sister. His hair was caught here and there with while spidersilk that gave him the look of an old grandfather, but his face was full of almost childish terror. “ _Óin!”_ he bellowed more loudly than Nori as he gathered his sister up in his arms. Dís saw tears in her brother’s eyes and she tried to open her mouth to speak to him, yet she could do nothing but stare.

Óin was beside them in a moment, his bare hands fumbling to find a pulse at her throat. Though he felt the regular thump of her heart beneath his fingers, he frowned in earnest and shook his head. “Poisoned,” he confirmed. “Bofur’s just the same. She’ll - she’ll be alright, lad.”

Thorin was holding his sister so tightly, Dís could almost feel her bones creaking. _Bofur,_ she thought with alarm, remembering how drawn and sorrowful he’d been when Bombur was sleeping, how short-lived was his joy. _Go look after Bofur._ All for naught; she knew her brother would not leave her side, not for a moment. The expression on Thorin’s face was pure despair, but he swallowed hard and listened as Óin continued.

“They both will. Give it a few hours,” he predicted and Dwalin, who had come running as soon as Nori shouted, gripped his cousin by the shoulder and spun him around to look in his eyes.

“What do you know of it?” Dwalin demanded, his shouts almost as loud as Thorin’s cry had been. “How can you be sure? When have you seen the likes of _that_ filth before?”

Óin shook Dwalin’s massive hand off and rolled his shoulders, “I’ve eyes, haven’t I? Neither of them has any swelling, they’re both breathing easy, their limbs aren’t locked up, just can’t move. You want the truth of it, laddie, if either of them were going to die, they’d already be _dead!”_

Dwalin swallowed hard at that pronouncement and stared down at Dís, immobile in her brother’s arms. Fíli and Kíli hovered uselessly behind him, their eyes wide with fright.

“We’re damned lucky it wasn’t one of the boys,” Óin finished looking at the pair of them darkly. “What stuns a grown dwarf like that might well kill a youngling.”

“But she _will_ be alright, Mister Óin?” Kíli asked, his voice breaking, hovering on the edge of a sob. “You said they’d be alright.”

“I did and they will,” he nodded. It ought to inspire confidence, Óin only spoke in absolutes when he was certain for he loathed being proved wrong, but the vagaries of their fates was enough to make anyone doubt even his surety. “Given time.”

“We haven’t got time!” Ori shouted in alarm, his voice breaking off in a terrified squeak. Dís heard the sound a second later, the rustle of the underbrush, the snapping of twigs and crunching of dead leaves. They were under attack.  
Was it the spiders come again? She could not see, Thorin was on his feet, she was lifted in his arms and she tried to grimace and scold, but blackness pressed in around her vision from all sides.

No, _no,_ it was all wrong, panic made him stupid. If the wounded must be carried, they ought to be hefted over the back, leaving one hand free to wield a weapon. Thorin made himself vulnerable to keep a better hold on her and Dwalin threw himself in front of both of them, dual wielding Grasper and Keeper and Dís wanted to shout at both of them to _keep their wits_ , but she hadn’t the strength.

It wasn’t spiders. It something more terrible than spiders. Elves had them surrounded and before she knew what was happening there was an arrow in her face and a voice hissing, “Do not think I will not hesitate to kill you, dwarf.”

All at once she was thirty years old again. In a tree, why had she been in a tree? To pick an apple? No, it was firewood, wasn’t it? A pack, high above her head.

 _I’ll get it!_ She could too, she could climb high enough if she had a boost, could wriggle along the branch until the brown leather strap was just within reach. Easy. It would be easy and they’d be pleased she’d come along, pleased she could be of use. _I can do it!_

 _I know you can,_ was the reply, warmly voiced, despite the hint of childish teasing and the quicksilver smile between the open arms. _I’ll just stand beneath you to catch it._

An arrow aimed right between her eyes. Had the branch broken or had she lost her balance? Dís could not remember, all she knew was that she was falling, falling to the forest floor...

The next time Dís opened her eyes it was to a long, thin, alien face bent over hers. The thin lips were slightly parted and the ancient eyes, grey as a raincloud bore into her own. Her response was pure instinct, she rammed her head upward and the creature fell backward with a cry of pain.

“No more bindings - I bade you keep well away from her when she woke,” a voice spoke outside of her range of vision.

Dís whipped her head around this way and that trying to take stock of her surroundings. The smell of earth was almost overpowering, not the clean, cozy scent of stone walls, but the damp, living-death fell of the underground, of moss and decay and dirt.

The bindings were evident the moment she tried to raise her arms, the metal around her wrists and ankles was mithril, she knew it instantly. If the shackles had been iron, she would have been on her feet already, even steel would have given way to her desperate thrashing by now, but mithril, that magical metal that did not rust or dull, would not bend even to dwarven strength.

Dís was dressed only in her tunic, trousers and boots. Her coat was gone and her amor, even her belt had been taken from her and all her weapons. She should not have been surprised to lose Frerin’s sword, but she felt a wild pang without its reassuring weight at her side. It made her fight harder against her bonds, fruitless though she knew her struggles to be.

As her heels dug into the earth, she felt a reassuring solid press of metal against her leg. There was one they had not noticed, tucked in a slit among the fur lining of her boots and she was so relieved she almost sighed aloud. It was a long, thin stiletto with a point as fine and sharp as a needle, the hilt narrow as an infant’s thumb and carved all over.

It was the last of a set of knives, the only weapons her mother forged with her own hands. _Desperation,_ her mother named it, only-half joking. _To pierce your enemy’s eye when he’s bearing down on you so close you get near enough his eye to stab him - those’ll be desperate straits, indeed._

The slender knife was inaccessible to her and would be of little help, but she felt better knowing she had not been pillaged utterly in this awful place.

“Peace,” that deep, clear voice intoned again. “Peace, last and only daughter of Durin’s line. None are about who would do you harm.”

The Elf stepped into the light that glowed around her, peeling himself out of the shadows. He was immensely tall even for one of his own kind and though his smooth skin and gossamer hair did not betray his age, his eyes were fathomless, ancient and terrible to behold. Dís stilled her muscles to repress a shudder. It was a form she had glimpsed as a child in the throne room of Erebor and once upon the crest of a hill, yet she could not mistake him now, despite the gulf of years.

Thranduil, the Elvenking, the Pitiless, the Oathbreaker. And she was entirely at his mercy.

“Where are the others?” she snarled. Now that her tongue was her own again, she was determined to use it. “Where is my brother? Where are my - ?”

Here she stopped herself. If the Elvenking knew her, he knew without a doubt who Thorin was, but it did not follow that he knew of her sons and Dís preferred to keep it that way. The Elf did not note her hesitation for he had raised a hand to indicate that she should cease speaking.

“Questions,” Thranduil nodded as though she had confirmed some suspicion he held. “I had questions for your brother and he gave me no answers. If you will satisfy me, perhaps we two will part on better terms. I shall answer one of yours and pray you extend me the same courtesy. Your companions are whole, hale, and well. Out of your reach for now, but you may trust my word that they are well looked-after."

Trust. Dís almost snorted in disgust, but only turned her head away and swallowed past the tightness in her throat. What cause had she to trust this traitor? When she was shackled, held down, like a criminal or a wild beast that required chaining lest it turn against its master. Perhaps that last comparison was more apt; if ever her chains were loose, she would have gladly torn open all that pale skin and bathed in the blood of the creature that held her captive.

"They have bread and clean water," he added. "Most welcome, I would think, after the agonies you suffered in the forest."

Dís looked up at him and her expression was pure disgust. "Agonies?" she asked. "You're talking about the suffering of a dozen dwarves. Where was your bread to relieve the agonies of a hundred times that number?"

"No," Thranduil said, flatly. "I have answered a question of yours. Now you must answer one of mine. What were you doing in my realm?”

Oh, that was a question she could answer, and readily, “Mostly starving.”

Dís could not read Elvish faces with any ease, but she was fairly certain he had been caught off-guard.

“Alike in mien and tongue, it seems," Thranduil's lips turned up, but only for a moment before they were inscrutably smooth once again. Dís had no idea what he might be talking about and kept her silence. She knew he would not give her answer. "No matter, I know your course, I knew two hundred years before your birth. Tell me, do you know how it was your grandfather ascended the throne?”

The Elvenking paused, evidently waiting for a response, but Dís had none to give. She knew full well the story of her grandfather’s ascension to power, it was glorious, bloody, and tragic as were many tales of their history. To have it recited to her, by an _Elf_ who had not raised his lily-white hand to aid a desperate people and likely remained idle in his empire of earth while they toiled above ground sickened her.

Heedless of her fury, Thranduil spoke on, “Let me tell it to you, then. Your grandfather, young in your people’s eyes, accompanied his father on another quest to reclaim a lost land and slay a dragon. A cold-drake, that breathed no fire, but slaughtered many, the King and his second son among the dead. The killing blow was landed by a shieldmaiden, rare in these latter days.”

“My grandmother,” Dís growled through clenched teeth.

One of the Elvenking’s dark eyebrows twitched upward, creating a wrinkle in his ghost-white brow. The flesh soon smoothed, “You do know some of your history. I am glad to hear of it, though I should not be surprised. You were named for her, after all.”

Dís’s lips parted, but she spoke nothing. She didn’t have to. Her face gave her away completely. “Oh, yes,” Thranduil nodded in response to her unvoiced question. “The Princess Sigdís, first daughter of the line of Durin in two generations. I myself bestowed upon your household twelve-score wolf pelts to mark the occasion of your birth. You were the namesake not of the honored dead, as is the custom of your people, but a living legend. The Huntress. The Dragonslayer.”

The Elf drew close now, so close Dís could see the whites of his eyes, unmarred, as though his pupils were set in the purest of pearls. “Tell me,” he breathed. “If she, who brought to death one of that vicious race, could not defeat the worm that even now lies curled in your treasure house, sleeping the centuries, what chance have you?”

Dís stared up at him with lifeless blue eyes and refused to give a moment's thought to his question. Nevermind that she herself suffered that same doubt, to hear her thoughts echoed by one such as him made her stomach clench painfully. "Where is my brother?"

“That I will not say,” he drew back once more and stood straight-backed, looming over her. “Unless you will speak to him on my behalf.”

“And say what?” Heart pounding against her ribs, Dís tried to gather her thoughts, which flitted and scattered like ravens startled by a thunderclap. To see her brother, to know he was well and whole would seem a blessing that she would risk anything for, even acting as the Elvenking’s messenger. But Dís was shrewd enough to bargain nothing before she knew the terms. What good would it be to see Thorin only to have him curse her for giving herself over to their enemies?

“Just this,” Thranduil drew close again and Dís could smell the wine on his breath. Rather than making her ache with the hunger and thirst that were her constant companions these many days, it just turned her stomach. Still, she would not look away. “Give up this foolish venture. Return to the West. Renounce this madness, this folly and let that which lies sleeping slumber on.”

West. Dís’s thoughts were birds they flew over the land, a green and blue-striped blur until she found herself walking the streets of the Ered Luin once again. The sun shone there in her mind’s eye. The sun always seemed to be shining when she thought of the Ered Luin, for all the rain and snow. When she thought of the Blue Mountains, she thought of green grasses and solid rock, the steady hum of a thousand dwarves going about their days. The ringing of the hammer on the anvil, the singing in the pub, her sons’ smiles.

The memory of comfort assailed her. Nestled into bed against a warm body with sun-kissed summer skin, strong shoulders scattered with freckles that she traced with her lips in the early morning glow. A ringing bell overhead, the noontime sun hot on her back as the hot air from half a dozen ovens boiled her front and Thyra sang out a greeting, voice carried on air that smelled of bread, always. Hervor’s lips on her cheek and arm around her neck as they forgot the words to their favorite songs, gone silly on ale. Lying flat on her back, a knife at her throat at twilight while shouts of, “Get ‘im, Mam!” made her break into laughter as she swept Thorin’s legs out from under him and held him, pinned, scant feet from where the wash fluttered on the line.

Dancing with Dwalin on Durin’s Day. Mead, seed cake and sweets on her Name Day, though she’d made all her kin swear they wouldn’t go out of their way to mark it. Ash and bitter wine on the Day of Remembrance, her hair covered with a shawl as she whispered her prayers and recalled all she and her people had lost. Gundabad. Khazad-dûm. Erebor. After all this, Erebor too, finally.

She’d left her answer too long. Thranduil spoke again into the silence, “There is a gathering darkness in the world which cannot - _must not_ be indulged. Let the dead lie.”

Dís snapped out of her reverie with a jolt. Could she ask Thorin to return to the West? Possibly. Just possibly, she could do that. But the Elvenking went too far. She could not collect what remained of her grandfather and brother’s funeral pyre. She could not find the place where her father’s corpse lay, forever unknown. Though laid in stone, her mother’s body would never lie easy in a foreign land, far from home. And what of the rest?

“They don’t lie,” Dís replied, her voice low and deadly. She rose up on her elbows as high as her shackles would allow until she was almost nose-to-nose with the Elf in whose slender hands her fate resided. “They were blown away all to ashes or else their bones lie still, under stone, unburied and unhallowed, trampled by the beast who yet lives in _our_ halls.”

 _Lives_ , she thought, spitefully. _Funny thing about sleeping creatures - they tend to wake up ere long._

The Elf’s fair features contorted into something ugly and he drew himself up, standing over her, tall and unbending as a steel rod. “It is something I have never grown to understand, this stubbornness of dwarves,” he sneered, then turned and spoke to the Elves behind him, including the one Dís tried to brain. There was a no bruise forming beneath the line of straight hair that glowed like flame in the candlelight. Dís was reminded so powerfully of Hervor just then and longed for her friend so much that she wanted to scream. “Take her away, have a care how you do it.”

Her bonds were never unclasped, merely unlatched from the hooks that held her in place. The Elves who performed the task were quick and avoided coming in close contact with her head or her teeth. One dwarf, it was said, was stronger than two grown elves; a dwarf in a rage was stronger than anything. Dís’s hands were bound and all around the room swords glinted, trained on her, as sharp eyes tracked her every move. If she was very quick and very lucky, she might manage to barrel four or five of them over and onto the floor before they killed her.

It was a risk she was unwilling to take, no matter the temptation when the Elvenking knelt before her, a mockery of fealty. He stared hard in her eyes and said, “Remember this, Sigdís, daughter of Thráin. The slaying of one cold-drake cost your people a king once before. Smaug is a mightier beast by far. Are you so willing to lose another that you hold so dear to his wrath? Or is it true what they say of dwarves and their hearts of stone?”

Dís spat at his feet. It was the lowest insult she could think to give; even the Goblin King had not provoked such a response from her.

 **“I spit on your grave,”** she cursed him in the ancient tongue of her people. Sparingly used, if ever spoken among outsiders; when it was, it was the last thing their enemies ever heard.

The Elvenking rose suddenly. Dís stared straight ahead and could not see his face. “Take her,” she heard the order above her head.

“Alone?”

“No,” a whisper of sound, silk on silk. Had he shaken his head? “With the others. Only _he_ remains alone.”

Fear, instinctive and awful, clenched her heart and squeezed her lungs. She did not know, could not say in that moment why it came upon her so suddenly, when during her interrogation by the Elvenking she had kept her head.. All she knew was that it was not for herself that she was afraid and that knowledge shook her down to the core of her being.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who were hoping for a showdown between Dís and Thranduil, I hope this was satisfactory! And for anyone who hasn't read _Children of the Lonely Mountain_ , Dís's fainting spell flashback of being threatened by Elves as a child is taken from Chapter 3 - http://archiveofourown.org/works/674194/chapters/1241607 
> 
> Also also, I'm pretty sure that Gimli wasn't speaking the super-researched Khuzdul of _The Hobbit_ when he said something nasty to Haldir (which I believe common wisdom holds was 'I spit on your grave,'), but I LOVE the idea that that's what he said and that it's the absolutely worst insult a dwarf can pay another creature.
> 
> ETA - No one mentioned it thus far in the comments, but a note on dwarf swearing 'S'hands' is my attempt at pseudo-medieval swearing, in this case it's a shortening of the phrase 'Mahal's hands' and a play on 'S'wounds,' a borderline blasphemous medieval swearword. Kind of like saying 'Jesus F'king Christ' today, usually I have the characters say 'By the Maker' which is the equivalent of 'Oh my God,' but Thorin's under stress.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** For implications of the psychological side-effects of **isolation** and implications of **self-harm.**

The shackles were removed only when Dís was in her cell. The red-haired Elf who she’d attacked upon waking had a sword trained on her, the tip resting against the half-open neck of her tunic, cold against her skin. Another elf, fairer than the first, warily circled her to unlock the manacles on her wrists and ankles.

“Be still,” he advised her needlessly.

Dís was silent, only grit her teeth and tried not to breathe too deeply; the edge of the blade was sharp and poised to draw blood if she moved a fraction of an inch. Once her arms and legs were freed the Elves moved quick as blinking, a stuttering flurry of silken hair, the swift flight of someone who’d been dared to stick their hand in the jaws of a wild beast and, having completed the task, wished to be as far from the threat as possible.

They were on the other side of the bars before Dís raised her head, securing the lock, hiding the key. The fair-haired Elf spoke, “We will return with food and drink for you, soon.”

The the other added, “If you require additional amenities, for wounds, or...you may tell us now or wait for the coming of the new guard with your meal.”

What queer creatures, to threaten in one breath and offer hospitality in the next. No Dwarf would be so changeable. No Dwarf would have held them without charge - and what could the charge be? Trespassing? Disturbing the peace? Dís did not ask for she was sure there would be no answer.

After waiting a beat, the two walked away, but Dís did not relax, how could she? Locked away in an elven prison, while the fate of her kith and kin was unknown to her - all but one. Thorin was here, but he was not _with her_ and the knowledge that he was somewhere in this ditch, all alone made her heart clench within her chest.

The cell she was in was not particularly wide or tall, clearly it was only meant to hold one creature. There was a pallet in the corner for sleeping that looked clean, a pot for the usual purpose and strong bars on all sides. The place was almost pitch black, Dís could make out the shape of brackets for torches, but they were unlit. The only light came from the corridor where the Elves disappeared, a faint, flickering glow that did nothing to dispel the inner gloom.

 _“Dís,”_ a furtive whisper made her jump, her hand went to her side to grasp her sword, but of course it was not there.

After her initial panic, she recognized the voice and scrambled forward on her knees, grasping for the bars and whispering, “ _Bombur?_. By the Maker, are you alright? Where are the others?”

“I’m fine, just fine,” he was quick to reassure her, kneeling close to the bars that separated them, pressing his face close to see her in the gloom. The bars were too close together for either of them to get their arms through far enough to embrace, but Dís wrapped her fingers around his, pressing them firmly to confirm that he was _really_ there. “The others...oh, I’m heartily glad to see you, lass, truly! They took you away and wouldn’t tell us where - one of ‘em said for healing, but you don’t _know,_ do you?”

Healing, that reminded her. “Bofur,” she asked urgently. “Did they take him away as well?”

Bombur shook his head. “He wasn’t as bad off as you was, the spiders didn’t bite so deep on him. He were standing and all when we stood ‘fore the Elvenking or whatever he calls himself. Didn’t have no use for the rest of us, only spoke to Thorin and had us all dragged off when Balin spoke to him sharp.”

“Balin?” Dís asked, incredulously. Of all the Dwarves she expected to lose his temper, Balin was the last of all.

Bombur actually smiled at the memory, but it was a quick flash of teeth, nothing like his regular grins. “Oh, aye. It were the Elf’s fault for goading him, kept going on ‘bout how we was raising havoc in his realm killing them spiders or something like. And Balin, he got so peevish, he says, ‘I wonder if you don’t keep ‘em as pets, you being so worried for their welfare.’ Kíli _laughed_ even, let me tell you, if I’d been in better spirits, I’d have had a laugh right along with him.”

“Good old Balin,” Dís remarked, but her heart was in her throat. Trust Kíli to find something funny in the midst of all this terror, but she was sure that King Thranduil did not take kindly to being made a mockery of. “Always knows just what to say - but where are the rest?”

Shaking his head sadly, Bombur replied, “Don’t know. I was here by me lonesome ‘til they tossed you in alongside me. Got took off in twos and threes, I reckon, not _too_ far off from each other, but not so close as we can keep track of ourselves neither. I heard Dwalin bellowing for nigh on an hour, but he’s gone quiet. Probably didn’t see no use in it.”

No use. Dwalin was as stiff-necked as any Dwarf who ever walked beneath the earth. If he had given up railing against their captors, the situation must have been hopeless, indeed. Dís sank down on her haunches, bowing her head against the bars in despair.

“Ey now,” Bombur said gently, tilting her chin up with one stout finger. “You don’t know how much good it does me heart to see you hale and know them Elves was good as their word ‘bout giving you back to us. Puts me mind at ease a bit, maybe they others aren’t faring so bad, I don’t think…”

He squinted into the darkness beyond their cells and lowered his voice in hopes of avoiding eavesdroppers. “I don’t think they know about the lads. That they’re yours or Thorin’s. Didn’t treat ‘em special, dragged them off as they did us, even if they’re not being treated no better, there’s no reason to treat ‘em worse.”

The reassurance did little to calm Dís’s mind, but she appreciated Bombur’s good intentions. His cousins were locked somewhere far away from him and he was trying to make _her_ feel better. Those Broadbeams, she reflected, bending her head to kiss his fingers, were uncanny. She’d said it before and she would say it again, there were no Dwarves with bigger hearts or kinder dispositions than Bombur and his kin. Why they ever put up with her people was utterly beyond Dís’s ability to comprehend, but she would be forever grateful.

Some of Bombur’s optimism about the dispositions of the Elves seemed justified. They were not cruel gaolers. They were given food to eat and clean water to drink at regular intervals and apart from her questioning by the Elvenking, Dís was not made the subject of another inquisition, nor was she treated differently from Bombur in any respect. It gave her cause to hope the others were alright, wherever they were, though she worried for them all constantly. Sometimes, in the long dark hours, she thought she heard the voices of their Company drifting out of the gloom, but it was just as likely to be her fancy as anything else.

Despair lurked constantly at the edge of her mind, mingling with guilt, bitter as gall. As she tried to sleep upon her pallet, moved close to the bars that she might at least be in arm’s reach of Bombur, she shook with grief and her eyes burned with tears that would not fall. They had come so _far_ , they were so _close_. The vision of the great mountain, a misty thing in her memory, imposed itself on her vision as she tried to sleep. More than that, she saw her brother’s face when he glimpsed it. So hopeful. And now, they were trapped, miles underground, at the mercy of their enemies and Thorin…

Thorin was all alone. She vowed when she was young that he would never be alone, that he must _never_ be alone and the thought of her brother isolated in this darkness pervaded her thoughts, invaded her dreams and left her shaking when she woke.

They were given hot water and soap to clean themselves, Dís never recognized the Elves who brought their meals, but the red-haired Elf, whose form was womanish beneath her leather armor, came with water and dry cloth. Her sword was in her hand, but her grip slackened when Dís made no move to attack her. What would be the point? If even if she managed to run her through with the dagger secreted in her boot, it would do her little good for the guard was numerous and she did not know where her fellows were held, or the way out.

The slim blade was useless to her except as a small comfort. She tried to use it to pick the lock, but her arms were too thick to snake through the bars at such an angle that she could reach the lock of her cell. The stiletto remained hidden away in her boots which she threw into the side of the cell, far away from the Elf who stood over her, watching with a singular intensity as Dís tossed her outer garments and underclothes over her shoes.

Little modesty had she, in such straits, but the direct gaze made her uncomfortable. _Never seen a naked dwarf before?_ she wanted to smirk, but didn’t. _Best divert your eyes over a ways; Bombur’s more to look at than I am._

Even as the meals in the cells restored her strength, the despair she felt in the place stole all her humor and spirits. To jest with their captors was unimaginable, to smile obscene. Dís simply scrubbed herself as quickly as she could to get the whole affair over and done with that the Elf might leave with the dingy water as quickly as possible.

Dís was pulling her tunic back over her head when the Elf spoke, “Is there anything you would have me tell your sons?”

It was a hesitation of only a fraction of a second, but it was a hesitation nevertheless, unmistakable and Dís cursed herself for a fool as she slowly turned and looked up, jaw clenching in anger. The question must have been in her face, despite her best attempt at keeping her expression blank, for the Elf spoke again, almost apologetically.

“They asked after their mother, the young ones, fair and dark. I do not know their names, they would not give them to me. You are the only she-dwarf among your number. I know your people do not permit their women to venture from their rock unless there is need - ”

“You know _nothing,”_ Dís snapped, turning her head away and dressing with her back to the Elves. Permission. What permission was granted when they roamed the earth, heartbroken and hungry? Dís crossed a continent twice in her lifetime and she would not be told what was the custom of her people by one of these.

The Elf, amazingly, did not retreat after her outburst. “Very well, I know nothing,” she agreed, cocking her head down at Dís, unblinking. “Regardless, would you have me speak to your sons on your behalf? I have told them you are as well as they, but they do not trust my word.”

“Why should they?” Dís asked, furious. On her feet she did not stand as high as the Elf’s shoulder, but she stood her ground and snarled. “Your King proved the trustworthiness of your people more than a century ago. I did not raise my sons to be fools.”

“I do not believe they are fools,” she plodded on, her voice even despite the tension that came into her limbs when Dís paid insult to her King. “I think they are worried about their mother.”

What did the Elf want with her? Did she think she would be taken in by those glass green eyes and a tilt of the head? Her sympathy, feigned or genuine, meant nothing to Dís.

Two could play at this game. Dís took herself to the darkest corner of her cell and sat with her back to the wall, forearms balanced loosely upon her knees as her eyes stared sightlessly ahead. Elven faces were as inscrutable as a cloudless sky, pale and impassive as the moon, but Dís could school her own face into neutrality and bow her head low to shadow her eyes. The Elf of the flame-colored hair might be a being of light, but Dís was a creature of stone, like the mountain and light could not penetrate to the heart of the mountain.

It was a long while she sat before the Elf finally tired of staring and padded silently away.

Dís thought she had seen the last of her, but she was mistaken for she returned again with their next meal. “I told them you refused to speak a word, except to tell me I knew nothing and that you had not raised them to be fools,” she informed Dís, who, unless she was very much mistaken, saw the ghost of a smile playing around the Elf’s mouth. “They were satisfied you were well, after that.”

She would not smile. Would _not._ The thought of her sons, eased in their hearts by the knowledge that their mother was alive and well enough to be obstinate with one of their captors brought her little joy, not enough to ease her fury and her guilt.

A rustling of fabric nearby let her know that Bombur was watching them closely, but he spoke not a word.

“They are just boys, are they not?” the Elf asked, her voice gentle, in a contrast to the wickedness of her words. “So young, yet you would bring them into the maw of a beast which laid waste to your people with only fourteen companions in the venture. I thought Dwarves cherished their children above all else, but I see now it is not so.”

“Do you mean to provoke me?” Dís spoke up sharply, digging her fingers into the flesh of her thighs to prevent herself lunging at the creature. “Is this some other trick of the Elves, taunting and taunting until our nerves snap and you find reason to have us slain? If you would kill us, _do it_ or else hold your tongue!”

She was shouting, of course she was. Dís hoped her voice echoed down the corridors that it might carry all the way to whatever cell held her brother. The Elf was cowed, a bit, she took a half-step back and looked at the dwarrowdam uncertainly. “I do not understand,” she said, half in and half out of the cell. “How it is you can love gold so much.”

Gold. All they had suffered, all they had risked and she thought it was all about their _gold?_ It was one of the gifts of their race, from their Maker and to honor Him and their talents they cut gems from the living rock and fashioned precious metals it into objects useful and beautiful. Why did the rest of the world speak of gold and metal and gemstones as if desiring them was something to be ashamed of? Elves and Men paid prettily enough for them, they paid for more than they knew. The blood, sweat and care of all the race of Mahal’s children was in every object shaped by their hands. Yet ever it was Dwarves who were chided for their love of gold.

“It’s naught to do with gold,” Dís muttered, though of course it was. Their Mountain was not rock and memories, their keepsakes, their treasure, their birthright was in that stone monolith, all that was theirs was crushed beneath the belly of that dragon. It was their gold, but furthermore it was their _home,_ and how dare these Elves deny them their chance to go home?

Raising her sapphire blue eyes to look into the Elf’s leaf-green ones, Dís squinted and asked, “How long have your people been masters of this forest?”

The Elf drew herself up and seemed proud to announce that they had been the caretakers of the forest realm since Oropher crossed the Ered Luin following the War of Wrath, though she herself was not so long-lived and had not known the great Elvenking, being only six-hundred years of age herself.

“And why do you stay?” Dís asked, watching with some satisfaction as the light in the Elf’s eyes faded somewhat and her mouth thinned. “We wandered your forest, it is a dark place, full of peril, foul things and wicked enchantments. If they’re not your doing, why remain at all? Why not follow the example of your King’s grandsire and find happier lands elsewhere?”

“Because this is our home,” the Elf replied without hesitation.

Dís nodded then, grimly. “There you have it,” she replied, taking her place upon the floor of her cell and starting in on the meal she had been given. “Why do we risk our lives and those of our most precious kin? Why have we come into your thrice-damned forest? Because Erebor is _our_ home, no matter what evil has overtaken it.”

The Elf was struck temporarily speechless. It appeared that she had never in her life thought that she might have cause to compare the plight of her people with that of the Dwarves. Dís did not care tuppence for her surprise; she only wanted to eat in peace.

“Brackish waters and spiders are not dragons,” the Elf said at last. “If Smaug lives on, you will know his wrath a second time and luck will not be with you as it was.”

“If the Worm lives on, do you not think he’ll awaken someday?” Dís asked, tearing viciously into a heel of bread. “What will your people do? Stay here in your dirt walls while the earth burns above you? Oh, why should I bother asking, of _course_ you will.”

 _That_ touched a nerve. The Elf descended upon her, the smooth face contorting itself into an angry sneer, “Our people are valiant in war. We have defeated greater evils than lie in that mountain of yours, do _not_ impugn our strength.”

“I’m not completely unread,” Dís shot back, practically nose to nose with the Elf. The knife in her boot pressed hard against her ankle and her fingers itched to reach for it. How fast _was_ this creature? Would Dís have time to slit her throat before she could call her fellow guardsmen? How long would she live before she was descended upon by the Elvenking’s people?

Not long enough, she knew and stayed her twitching fingers. Not long enough for it to matter.

“I’ve heard stories of Elven might, I _saw_ your army the day the dragon came,” she spoke instead. “Those stories of your people’s bravery had passed into legend by the time my ten-times great-grandfather sat upon his throne. And when faced with a beast of so little evil as you rank the dragon Smaug, you _turned away_. Were you there, that day, she-elf? Were you relieved when the order was given to turn back? Where was your strength then?”

The Elf stared hard at Dís for just a moment more before she rose and strode away, slamming the door of her cell shut with a clang. Bombur whistled low between his teeth.

“Those were some heavy words,” he spoke into the silence that followed the Elf’s retreat. “What do you think she wanted?”

“I don’t know,” Dís replied shortly. This battle of wits left her exhausted, she was no scholar or wordsmith and she was sick of talking. What of her vow to be stone? Where had that gone in her anger? “I just hope she didn’t get it, whatever it was.”

That night her sleep was fitful. She dreamed of her sons, grown small again, lost and crying for her, but she could not reach them. All around the air smelled of smoke and Thorin was calling for her, but from where she did not know. The fire was hot, closing in and the fumes caused her eyes to sting and water. Cries of, _“Dís! Dís!”_ came from all around, she tried to call back, but her voice caught in her throat, she could not scream or move. As her panic grew, so did the volume of the voice.

“Dís! Dís! Oh, bother, do wake up!”

It was not her brother’s voice at all that broke through the haze of her slumber, but she sat bolt upright when she recognized the voice of their burglar. “Bilbo?” she asked incredulously. It was difficult to keep track of time, all was darkness, but the torches in the hall were only half-lit and she assumed that most of Thranduil’s kingdom was abed at this hour.

“Yes!” The halfling whispered. Dwarves prized themselves on their ability to see in near-darkness and Dís was possessed of a pair of fine eyes, but she could not trace even an outline of the hobbit beyond the bars of her cell.

“No, no!” he added hastily when she went to rouse Bombur. “Let him sleep, he snores so loudly, we won’t be overheard if we’re quiet!”

“Come closer,” she urged him, crawling over to the front of her cell. “I can’t see you at all, where are you?”

“Nevermind that, I can’t come too close, what if the guards come round?” he asked. Dís had to be more tired than she thought, for though she still could not see hide nor curly hair of him, Bilbo’s voice seemed to be so close she could swear she felt his hot breath in her ear. “I’m so pleased I’ve found you! The others are well, everyone’s properly looked-after, it seems - ”

“Everyone?” Dís sat up on her knees, eyes wide and hopeful. “You’ve seen everyone? How are they? _Where_ are they?”

“Not...not too far,” he replied, a strange hesitation in his voice. “You’re all along this corridor, more or less, it’s a maze this place! Can’t tell which way is left or right or where the sun is, if it’s rising or setting. It’s as I said, well in body, Bofur’s just fine as well, no worse for wear and spider-poison. Oh, I _am_ pleased to see you and Bombur, now we can begin to think of escape! I was so worried, you’re the last two of the lot, I’ve seen everyone except...except Thorin.”

There were a thousand questions Dís wanted to ask him, how he had evaded capture, exactly how the others were faring with details on every single one of them, but they all flew out of her head when he revealed that he had not seen Thorin.

Without thinking, she reached through the bars in the direction of Bilbo’s voice. As expected, her arms were stuck before she got her elbow through, but she reared back suddenly at the unpleasant sensation. It felt as though she had brushed against the soft fabric of the hobbit’s jacket, but she still could not discern his outline in the dark and yet it had _not_ felt like Bilbo’s worn red coat at all. She felt like her hands had been plunged in ice water, prickly, clammy and cold and she wrapped them around herself with a shudder.

“Oh!” Bilbo exclaimed, falling back with a shuffling of limbs and rustling of fabric that indicated he had fallen on his backside.

Trying to ignore the creeping sensation that followed whatever strange contact she made with their burglar, Dís glared hard at the darkness and made her voice firm. “Find him,” she ordered. “I don’t care how long it takes, do nothing else, _think_ of doing nothing else until you _find him_. He’s all alone, our people should never be alone. You must - ”

The torchlight in the hall flickered. No footsteps sounded, but Dís knew the guard was coming all the same. She threw herself back on her pallet and feigned sleep as well as she could, lying stiffly on her side, trying not to breathe. After a sufficient length of time had passed, she rolled onto her back and looked at the bars. The room seemed deserted.

“Bilbo?” she whispered. The word echoed slightly, but there was no reply made that night.

* * *

Bilbo scampered out the door, ducking around the guards who were drawn to Dís and Bombur’s cells by the commotion. Dís and Bombur. That was everyone accounted for with the exception of Thorin who Dís all but commanded him to find this night. Uncharitable, but he thought that she had seen very little of the Elvenking’s vast underground realm and if their positions were exchating, Lady Dís would likely not have stumbled upon her brother yet either.

Dwarves, perhaps, could have made better sense of the place, but to a Hobbit’s mind, it was as confusing as playing a game of Blind Man’s Buff with Poppy Bracegirdle who always tied the cloth too tightly and spun the Blind Man round and round so hard and so quickly he was never sure what way was up.

Oh, how he longed for home. Grass beneath his feet, a sky overhead. There was food, at least, but he needed to play the sneak to obtain it, making for the pantry when the Elves were preparing the meals for their prisoners, nicking a little of this and a little of that, hardly enough to truly satisfy, but Bilbo hadn’t had a good meal since they left Beorn’s house. The memory of those pitchers of cream made his stomach rumble so loudly he was sure the guard would take notice even though his ring was securely on his finger. Perhaps a quick trip to the kitchens would not go -

No. No. This was not a time for thinking of his stomach, Dís had set him a task and he would see it through. in any case, once he knew where all of his friends were, he could devise a plan to get them all out. Everyone else was present and accounted for, held side by side in pairs of two, save the youngest lads who were all thrown in, Kíli, Fíli and Ori, together.

It was difficult finding Thorin, he did not spit and swear like Nori or bellow like Dwalin and Dís or even whistle to break up the quiet like Bofur. It was sheer luck that he paused at the right cell, Thorin’s black hair and dark clothes blended seamlessly into the surrounding dark.

The cell the Elvenking ordered him locked away in was far away from his companions, so far that even Dwalin’s deafening roars of anger would have been as whispers to him. Thorin was not sleeping, but sitting up, his back to the bars eyes open, but looking at nothing. Bilbo drew close to his side and whispered his name; at first the dwarf did not move.

“Thorin?” Bilbo called again, louder and more uncertain. “Are you...it’s…”

“Bilbo.” It was the first time Thorin had called him by his given name, normally it was ‘halfling,’ or ‘the hobbit,’ or, when he was in very high spirits, ‘Mr Baggins.’ Bilbo honestly did not know whether this was an improvement or not.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said and now Thorin moved, darting his head around and squinting in the blackness as his sister had done. Bilbo almost gasped. The others were not _pleased_ by their circumstances, but they looked better than they had during that awful period of starving in the forest.

Despite the strange mist being invisible cast over his vision, Bilbo could see that Thorin looked worse. His skin was ashen, there were dark circles under his eyes and, strangest of all, the flesh around his fingernails was raw, as if Thorin had chewed it to bleeding with his teeth.

“I can’t see you,” his voice was a hoarse whisper, nothing at all like his usual brusque bark and Bilbo came closer, though he knew that Thorin would not see him more clearly. “Come closer, I can’t...I don’t trust my ears in this place. Nor eyes neither, but both at once would be _something.”_

Bilbo twisted the little ring around his finger nervously. When he donned it as the Elves burst through the trees, arrows drawn, he was afraid it would not work as it had for frightful water ghouls and Dwarves. Elves were the oldest, wisest creatures in the world, he worried their eyes might see through little enchantments, but thus far they were as blind to him as the others.

“I…” he licked his lips, uncertain. Then before he could talk himself out of it, pulled the ring off all at once, like unsticking a piece of clothing from a dried-over cut. Closing his hand around it, he kept it in his grasp should he need to disappear again and padded forward so that his nose was against the bars of Thorin’s cell. Without the benefit of the haze cast by the ring, he saw clearly how ill Thorin looked. His eyes were overbright, as if from tears of fever and his hands, so large and strong, _shook_ as he wrapped them loosely around the bars.

“Oh, Thorin, I’m so sorry,” he apologized, realizing at once that Dís’s words were not hyperbole. When she said that members of the dwarven race should not be alone, she meant it with all her heart. He thought of all those days he spent, locked away in his smial, happily ensconced with his books and maps. It seemed a rare and delicious pleasure to him, shutting the world out for a time. But he had been home, not in a dingy cell. And if he wanted to chat with the neighbors, they were right down the hill, over the hedgerow. “I ought to have found you sooner, I’m sorry, it’s just a maze this place, I am _awfully_ \- are they mistreating you?”

Thorin closed his eyes and shook his head, hunching his shoulders. It appeared that merely holding himself upright was sapping all his strength. “Nothing worse than I deserve, leading you into their hands - how did you manage...Never mind. Tell me. How are the others?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that Thorin could not have known the Elves would discover them and that he certainly did not _deserve_ to suffer for it, but he was quite sure that more chastisement, however kindly meant, would not do Thorin any good. “They’re all fine, better, even than they were in the forest. Everyone’s been fed and given water to wash and...well, it’s better than starving.”

“Is it?” Thorin questioned him. There was something about him, something in his voice, a flat affect that sent a shudder up Bilbo’s spine. It was more evident than ever that he needed to get his companions out as soon as possible. The others might have been suffering from captivity and boredom, but Thorin...Bilbo could not honestly say he thought the dwarf could _survive_ his isolation very much longer.

“Now I’ve found you, I’ll have you all out, quick as a wink,” he vowed, giving Thorin’s hand a heartening pat through the bars. Glancing over his shoulder he made to back away, but the dwarf caught his arm, hand closing all the way around his wrist.

“No!” Thorin’s eyes darted around almost wildly, his jaw clenched. He seemed embarrassed of himself, but he did not loose Bilbo’s arm. “Stay...just for...I can’t...please stay.”

“All...if you’d like,” Bilbo replied awkwardly, laying his slim hand atop Thorin’s own, patting his fingers again, for he hadn’t any idea what to do. In the course of their journey, Bilbo had seen Thorin experience a great many emotions, he thought he was most surprised by Thorin’s mirth, but now he was shocked to the core by his terrible fear. “Have you slept?”

“No,” Thorin shook his head, resting his brown upon the bars. “Bad dreams.”

“I see,” Bilbo nodded, though he really did not. Before this quest, his nights were rarely full of terrors, the worst dreams he had were not true nightmares that induced terror, they were merely disconcerting. When one had seen as much of the evil of the world as Thorin, he could not imagine what kept him up nights. “Well...you ought to try. When I was a-a fauntling, my mother used to tell me the most wonderful stories and I always begged for more, but she’d say, ‘Oh no, my berry,’ - she called me her berry, I was born when the last of the blackberries were ready to be picked, but she was birthing me and missed them, but she said I was the sweetest berry she could have...do you know what? That isn’t important. Anyway, to make a long story short, I poked and prodded and begged for tales I was too young for that sometimes spooked me awfully. But she sent me to bed and said that once very nice thought could chase away ten terrible ones.”

He was babbling. It was queer, he had a reputation at home for being polite, but rather a quiet chap. Among these Dwarves, Bilbo’s tongue untied itself and he found he could dither on and on about nothing for ages. What was unusual here was that Thorin seemed to be genuinely listening to him. “So, what I meant to say in there was actually to give you some advice. The advice being that if you think of something pleasant before getting into bed, it will be foremost on your mind when you sleep.”

“And if I can think of nothing pleasant?” Under other circumstances, Thorin might have sneered at him, but he was only resigned. “If all my thoughts are of blood and ruin and regret?”

“You must have others,” Bilbo pointed out. He must. No one who could laugh like Thorin, however rare it was heard, had a head only filled up with darkness. He tried to remember when exactly he’d heard that laughter, it seemed an age ago. “We could make a trade, I’ve just told you a rather silly incident from my youth, surely you have...some. Everyone’s done something that seemed awful as a child that turns out to be rather funny later.”

Thorin was quiet so long that Bilbo was afraid he had offended him. Dwarves were so tight-lipped about certain things, was it wrong to ask of stories from their youth? Still, he sat and waited in the silence. He had very little choice in the matter; Thorin still would not let go of his hand.

“Frerin always had terrible ideas,” Thorin said abruptly. “We were children together, but I was old enough to mind him, at least my parents thought so, after Dís was born. But he could be persuasive and in the moment…”

Thorin trailed off, but Bilbo smiled tentatively and gave him an encouraging nod. “Did you break anything?”

“No,” Thorin shook his head and his mouth looked less tense. “Not during the incident I’m referring to. My father was seldom careless with his keys, but one day, in winter, he left the weapons cabinet open. Frerin decided it was fated. It was the first good snowfall of the season and he wanted to - do you get much snow in your Shire?”

“A bit,” Bilbo replied. “Enough for the children to come home soaked through at teatime, pelting one another with the stuff.”

“Aye, dwarflings as well, but we’ve got hills. And sledges meant for the transport of goods, but children make good use of them too. Only Frerin thought a round shield would do just as well.”

Bilbo could see where the tale was heading and reacted with an anticipatory, “Oh, dear.”

Thorin’s eyes closed and he made a little huffing sound that might have been an attempt at a chuckle, “We sneaked outside, pleased to no end with ourselves for being so clever. Our parents were often busy, you can imagine. Looking back now, I’m sure they intended to take us out themselves later, but we thought we might as well go on without them, if the spring thaw came early and we didn’t get another chance.”

“Were you caught?”

“Of course,” but Thorin smiled, the merest turn up of his mouth. “By my grandfather, one of the Guard must have seen what we were up to.”

“Oh,” Bilbo’s breath caught and he could not imagine why Thorin believed the memory pleasant. Balin’s few words about the dead king and his illness led Bilbo to conclude that he must have been very angry indeed to see shields that were probably generations old being carelessly used. Vague thoughts of voices and hands raised, frightened children in the snow played upon his mind and he asked, “Was he very cross?”

“Oh, aye,” Thorin nodded, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Vexed as anything we hadn’t summoned him before we had our fun. Took us both down over and over again, one on each knee. The shield wasn’t all that big, we all of us tumbled into the snow. Had to be an hour before we went back in, got me up on his shoulders and Frerin on his hip. Hot baths and hot cider afterward, Frerin fell asleep in his mug.”

“Oh,” Bilbo breathed again, this time in delight. “Your grandfather sounds...he sounds...wonderful.”

“He was,” Thorin agreed, letting Bilbo’s arm fall out of his now slack grip. “He truly was.”

The lights in the hall went to flickering, signalling the approach of the guard. “I must go,” Bilbo informed Thorin apologetically. The dwarf nodded, resigned, and some of the shadows came back into his face, but he seemed, at least to Bilbo’s hopeful eyes, less troubled than he had been.

“Do try to sleep,” he said as he backed away toward the door, ring sliding effortlessly back onto his fingers. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.”

Soon, he knew, was not going to be nearly soon enough. Thorin slumped back down against the bars of his cell, eyes closed, head bowed. Bilbo felt his heart break to look at him and no matter what his feet told him to do, he could not make himself leave the room.

Sighing as if his entire body was exhausted, Thorin curled up on his pallet, back to the door, tense all over, but his breathing evened out after several long minutes. When the room echoed with soft snores, Bilbo finally convinced himself that it was alright to leave now, but he vowed to himself that he would return on the morrow, as soon as he was able.

Dís had been absolutely right. Thorin ought never have been left alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not 100% happy with this chapter, I wrote it in fits and starts, I hope that doesn't show too badly. Poor Thorin, though, he broke my heart with every sentence.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul Word of the Day - 'nadadel' means 'brother of brothers'

The days wore on, Bilbo visited them almost daily, as often as he could, though his visits were brief, of necessity. And always - _always_ \- at what Dís imagined was night aboveground, when the torches were doused to half light and the guards who prowled beyond the bars of their cells seemed more scarce than in other hours.

Bilbo was always shrouded in darkness and after that first encounter she did not try to touch him again, still slightly unsettled. She did not know by what means he made himself melt into the darkness, whether the wizard chose to impart some magical knowledge to their burglar before he chose to depart, but she was happy that Bilbo was unfettered, by whatever means he managed it. As close to happy as she could be in this place.

Whenever the halfling drew near her cell, whispering her name, she practically pounced on the bars peppering him with questions of her brother, her sons, the rest of their Company. Poor Bombur never had the chance to get a word in, but Bilbo was good about not leaving until he had given her at least a few words about the health and well-being of all their fellows.

The one he was most reticent about was Thorin. She had to inquire about him at least twice before their burglar would say more than, “He’s well,” which she knew was a _lie._ There was no chance that Thorin was well or anything close to it being held in captivity, far away from his friends and family by the Elvenking. Either Thranduil had forgotten the constitution of dwarves or he was the worst kind of monster Dís had encountered.

This Elf was unlike orcs who killed and bled and did nothing else or goblins who reveled in causing pain. Their imprisonment, unimaginable without a trial in any of the dwarven kingdom, was bad enough, but to keep Thorin in isolation was torture, nothing less, but nothing in the Elvenking’s demeanor when he spoke to Dís bespoke a truly malevolent nature. On the contrary, he seemed to think he was doing them a favor, like a parent who placed a screen before an open flame to make it impossible for a child to burn itself.

Thorin complained of the same treatment in Rivendell and so they left before Lord Elrond could attempt to keep them behind. Would he have gaoled them, she wondered? Chained and shackled them before they could cross the Misty Mountains? There was no way to know, but it hardly mattered for they were bound now, no matter what assurances Bilbo gave that he was devising a way to get them out.

“Just a few days more, maybe less time than that,” Bilbo told them earnestly. Dís did not entirely believe him, he’d proved himself more than willing to tell lies for the sake of keeping her spirits up. She’d rather he was honest with her from the first and let her spirits do what they would. “I believe they’re planning a...a celebration of some kind, judging by the amount of hustle and bustle in the pantry. If we’re to leave this place, we should do it then.”

“We’ll need our weapons,” Dís told him dully, but Bilbo was already nodding.

“Oh yes, I’ve heard that a hundred times,” he rolled his eyes. “You’ll get them if I can find them and if I can’t, well, you’ll just have to do without. I think you’d be more eager for your freedom than your swords.”

“They’re one and the same,” Dís growled, not in a humor to explain that their weapons were worth more to them than his brass buttons. Even if she did waste her breath in telling him what their weapons meant to them, those forged by their own hands or those passed down from their fathers, mothers and grandparents, he would never understand.

There was a rustling sound beyond the bars, Bilbo was fidgeting. “Very well,” he replied courteously. “I shall do my best, but at the moment I think it would be wise to go, is there anything you would have me pass on to Thorin, any message?”

So many things she wanted to say to her brother, but more than that, she wanted him to speak to her, she wanted to hear his voice, embrace him, let him know from her own lips that she did not blame him for this misadventure. No one did. That she still thought their quest was right and hang any Elf who would tell them otherwise, but she was sure Bilbo would temper her words so they did not burn upon his tongue. A slayer of spiders and one who faced down orcs with nary a flinch, there was more to their burglar than met the eye, but she had never heard him speak against Elves and she was sure he would not do so at her bidding.

“Tell him I love him,” she said at last, slumping back onto her pallet away from the bars. Dís was full of restless energy that longed to be spent in work or exercise, but she could do precious little to slake her body’s thirst for occupation here. “For all the good that’ll do him.”

Only when she was quite sure Bilbo was gone did she lower her head into her hands and sigh.

“I think it’ll do him good.”

Raising her eyes, Dís favored Bombur with a pathetic excuse for a smile. “You don’t have to do that,” she said quietly, edging closer to the bars that separated them. “Bucking me up. Not if you don’t want, I know it’s - ”

It was rare for Bombur to interrupt another, but he did so now, albeit gently, “In the first place, I do want to. In the second, I reckon it _will_ do him good. Sincerely. And that’s that.”

Dís tried to look convinced, but she was teetering on the very edge of hopelessness and found herself staring close to that edge, staring into that void she was sure Thorin fell into more often than she had. Dark moods, she called them, black fits of temper when he couldn’t sleep or get out of bed, when he shouted at them all to leave him alone and then wept when he thought no one could hear him. No one _could_ hear him in this place, no one who cared about him? By the Maker, what state was he in?

Bombur’s fingers brushed against her shoulder and Dís leaned back against him, feeling guilty for taking comfort when Thorin couldn’t. She _promised_ , she swore she’d never let him be alone and now…now…

“I told a wee falsehood,” Bombur spoke up, not breaking contact with her, though Dís shifted that she could look on his face. There was a bit of a smile lurking around his mouth, like a dwarfling caught with his hand in the sweets tin. “To Óin. All of you, but when he asked if I had dreams, I said I did, but it weren’t true. I could hear you all clear as anything. Couldn’t do nothing about it, not even open me eyes, but me ears worked as well as they ever have.”

Dís couldn’t help herself, she shivered. She’d known only an hour’s paralysis, two at most and it had been torment for her. To know what was going on around oneself, but to be unable to respond, to move, to act - and Bombur had been in such straits for days.

“Oh, Bombur,” she said softly, kissing his hand again. “I didn’t know, I didn’t have any idea - ”

“Nah,” he held up his other hand to cut her off. “I didn’t say that because I was looking for you to be feeling sorry for me. Didn’t do no harm in the end, did it? And ‘cos I want you to know, them words you spoke? ‘Bout Thyra and the children? Did me a world o’good. Doing a kindness, it’s not so useless as you think.”

“It was more than a kindness,” Dís insisted. “I meant it, every word.”

“Aye, I know you did,” Bombur nodded, just as earnest. “And so have I. Thorin’s in a bad state, of that I’m sure. But that’s when a body needs love more than ever. When it’s bleak, just when it’s the hardest to hold on to any good feeling, that’s when you’ve got to dig ‘em out and hold ‘em tight.”

“I made him a promise,” she whispered, throat tightening. “I promised him he’d not be alone and now, he’s more alone than ever he’s been.”

There was a moment of quiet, but then Bombur sighed, very lightly and squeezed Dís’s shoulder as well as he could through the bars that separated them. “Do you know, he said just the same thing t’me about you?” he asked. “Not quite, but he told me he made you a promise you’d not suffer no more once you was settled amongst us. Weren’t one he could keep and you couldn’t make good on yours either, but you love each other enough to _try_. Mightn’t work out in the end, but that counts, lass. It counts.”

“Is that one of,” she had to pause and clear her throat, for her voice had gone choked and raspy. “Is that one of your Ma’s wise notions Bofur’s so fond of?”

“It surely is,” Bombur replied warmly. “She were a wise ‘dam, for all she didn’t have her letters nor so much in the way of schooling.”

“Wish I could’ve known her,” Dís remarked quietly. They hadn’t many elders left amongst their number, fewer with each passing year. Her great-aunt and uncle were back in the Ered Luin, praying over them every night she was sure. It was moments like this, when she was utterly at a loss and desperately in need of guidance that she felt the loss of their parents and grandparents most keenly. What a rag-tag bunch of wandering children they were.

Bombur nodded without saying a word, which turned out to be fortuitous for the redhaired elvenwoman was back again, empty-handed this time. Her eyebrows were drawn to a point over the bridge of her nose and she knelt down before Dís’s cell, staring unblinkingly at her.

“I would ask you a question, will you answer me?” she asked urgently.

It was not the first time that she had returned, seeking information which Dís refused to give more than the most curt, unhelpful answers to. This was the first time she asked permission to question her and Dís could not help throwing a questioning sideways glance at Bombur. He had removed his hand from his shoulder and they lay limply in his lap, but she saw him deliberately sign the word _Careful_ , before he shifted well away from the two of them.

“It depends,” Dís replied slowly, “on whether you’ve questions I think are worth answering.”

The Elf pursed her lips and looked exasperated. It was easier to read emotions on this one’s face. Dís had exchanged few civil words with her, but she got the impression that she was young for one of her race, though still much older than Dís herself. No wonder she seemed to spend so much time around the cells that held Fíli and Kíli and Ori.

“We have not,” the Elf glanced over her shoulder, listening for something that Dís could not hear. When she was satisfied that whatever caught her attention was gone, she turned back to Dís, coming closer to the bars than she had, so close Dís could have slit her throat if she was quick enough. “We have not gone beyond the borders of this forest in decades, not since your people crossed the Misty Mountains, never to return. Our King will not permit it, he fears that provoking the darkness abroad will bring it into our realm all the quicker.”

Unable to help herself, Dís snorted unsympathetically. “Judging from what I saw of your realm,” she sneered, “the darkness without and the darkness within all seem to me to be two sides of the same bad penny.”

To her great surprise, the Elf nodded vigorously. “That’s what I thought,” she said with grim triumph. “That’s what I’ve been saying to - never mind that, but your sons and their companion spoke of stone giants waking in the mountain, of Orcs roaming the countryside in numbers not seen since dark days long past.”

“You said you had a question,” Dís prompted, weary to death of the conversation of Elves. If they did not chide her people for their inability to sit idly by and watch the earth become overrun by filth, they otherwise spoke of their valor thousands of years gone by. It was tiresome and Dís had no patience for it. “Aye, all that and more, though I’ll own your spiders were wicked beasts.”

“They are _not_ our spiders,” the Elf snapped, her white knuckles going paler still as she gripped the bars. “We would have slain them ourselves if you had not stumbled into their lair - ”

“Stumbled?” Dís cried, getting to her feet and walking to the bars of her cell, grasping the bars above the Elf’s hands. Standing, she was taller than the Elf was on her knees and she glared down the point of her nose at her. “You think this is some frolic for us, some jape? Every step of the way we’ve been dogged by some new horror, you think this is a journey we undertook _lightly?_ Because we thought it would _entertain_ us, because we needed to line our pockets?”

Dís slammed her hands hard against the bars and though they did not move an inch, the Elf jumped back, startled.

“What you would wake, what _horror_ lies in that mountain is worse by far than anything you have yet seen,” the Elf replied, but her voice was not as calm and steady as it had been.

“Do you think it will sleep until the earth is made new?” Dís asked incredulously. “Either it is dead and has made our homeland its crypt and there _will_ come treasure-hunters or it lives and sleeps and waits and _hungers_ to add to its hoard and fill its belly. All your efforts to keep the darkness from your lands will be for naught when the Worm sets the trees alight. I might have been a child, but I remember the smell of burning flesh and the sting of hot ash in my eyes.”

She tried not to. It was worse in those first weeks on the road, sleeping on hard earth in the wilderness, the only familiar things around her being her brothers’ bodies, one on each side. Many a night she’d wake up choking and sputtering, covered in sweat from nightmares, Thorin’s arms stifling her even as she clutched at him, tried to draw him closer.

_”Hush, hush, namadith, you’re alright, you’re alright, you’re safe, I’m right here, I’m right here.”_

“The drake will wake; tomorrow or a century hence,” Dís growled, jaw clenched. “Stand against it, or bury your heads in the dirt, it makes no difference to us - just get out of our way.”

The Elf had no other comment to make. Once again, she stared at Dís, but this time the dwarf could not read her thoughts in her expression. Rising, she strode toward the door on feet that seemed not to touch the earth beneath the soles of her boots.

“Uncanny,” Dís muttered hatefully, making her way back to her pallet. When Bombur called her name, minutes later, she feigned sleep. When she woke later that night, choking and sweating, there was no one to reassure her, no arms to comfort her. Not that night nor the next two together.

On the third, she woke, trembling, to the sound of Bilbo calling her name and a key jingling in a lock.

* * *

“Drunk?” Bombur inquired in a sleepy whisper as Dís pulled his arm to help haul him to his feet. “Can Elves _get_ drunk?”

“These Elves can,” Bilbo replied, a touch impatiently. Every inch of him was as taut and tense as a bowstring wound too tightly. “Come, come! We haven’t much time, I _still_ need to fetch Thorin once you’re settled.”

“Settled where?” Dís asked, following him to the doorway of their cells and squinting into the corridor. It was black as pitch, no Elven guardsmen seemed to be about, but the darkness posed only few impediments. Locks and bars were more effective against dwarven night-sight than a few doused torches. “Do you have a plan?”

“Of course I do!” Bilbo exclaimed, then clapped a hand over his mouth as though he could stiffle the words once he’d already spoken them. Seemingly trying to downplay the noise he’d made, he took to scolding his companions. “Oh, stop clomping about! You’re bound to rouse the whole place with those dratted boots of yours. Would that you had some sturdy-hobbit feet amongst you.”

“Well, I’ll apologize for the unworthiness of my feet if _you’ll_ tell us where we’re going,” Dís reached out and turned his ear sharply. She was feeling rather nettled herself, the fact that Thorin was still imprisoned sat very sour with her, she was of half a mind to demand Bilbo tell her where her brother was that she might fetch him herself, but she was sure their burglar would not alter his course for her, no matter how much she threatened and cursed.

“Through, just...aha! Here!”

They’d gone down corridors, then up again, tripping over steps and narrowly avoiding banging into walls before they came to a dim little patch of light which led into a room filled floor to ceiling with barrels. Dís had never seen so many in once place, not in Bildr’s pub or in the cooper’s shop. The room bore the vinegary smell of an old spilled cask and she knew immediately that she was in a wine cellar, albeit the grandest she had ever seen.

“Dís!”

Hundreds of barrels of spirits were nothing to her when she heard Dwalin’s voice rumble behind her, the dearest sound in the world to her at the moment. Dís only half turned before she was crushed against his broad chest and she felt his lips press hard against her scalp. Not half a second later he held her at arm’s length, eyes marking some spot over her head, restlessly searching for someone. “Where’s Thorin?”

Dís gestured behind her. “Bibo’s off to - ” but she stopped speaking when she turned around and realized the halfling was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t have another moment more to contemplate their burglar’s strange disappearance because she was immediately attacked on both sides by her sons, whose twin cries of, “MAM!” were loud enough to give them away if nothing else.

Dís didn’t scold them, she wasn’t able, being entirely occupied in taking their faces in her hands and kissing them soundly, over and over, switching so quickly between the two of them that she made herself dizzy. All the while they chattered at her without pausing for breath.

“We’d heard you were alright - ”

“Good enough to back-talk Tauriel - ”

“The Elf with the red hair, that’s her name - ”

“She’s Captain of the Guard - ”

“Oh, she didn’t like you at _all_ \- ”

“What’d you _do_ to her, Mam?”

They looked much better than they had, their faces were less drawn, their eyes brighter, thought that might have been the relief of seeing their mother again after their long captivity. Dís was about to answer their questions, smiling broadly for the first time in ages until Dwalin spoke up and took away the little mirth she’d managed to regain.

“Do you mean Thorin wasn’t with you?” he asked, a note of horror creeping into his voice.

Dís looked up at him, biting her lower lip. Wordlessly, she shook her head.

“He was _alone?”_ That was Balin, she’d never heard the older dwarf sound so shaken before in her life.

“Aye,” she replied and felt both her sons grip her tighter around the waist, their faces falling into identical expressions of worry. “By order of the Elvenking, curse his hands.”

The rest of the Company, who had been joyously reuniting with one another, went quiet all at once, concern darkened their expressions and a few muttered oaths against the Elves and their cruelty. Most shivered at the thought of being kept in those earthen cells, without craft, without company, nothing but their own thoughts and the sound of their breathing. It was enough to drive the sanest dwarf to madness.

“Just through here, come along,” Bilbo’s soft voice echoed down the corridor and reached their ears. Dwalin hurried toward it with long strides as a lower register muttered something unintelligible. “Yes, yes, I told you, they’re quite safe every last one of - oh!”

Thorin looked like a ghost. His skin was ashy pale and the circles under his eyes were so dark they looked bruised. Fíli and Kíli shrank back against their mother, hands over their mouths to stifle their gasps. The best that could be said about him was that he did not appear to have lost any weight since their misadventure in the forest, but his hands hung limply at his sides as though all his strength was gone.

Dwalin did not hesitate a moment longer. Without any blustering or self-consciousness he closed the gap between himself and Thorin and took him in his arms, holding him in a tight embrace. Thorin’s arms were around him immediately, clutching Dwalin’s back and clawing into his shirt with a desperation none of the Company had seen in their king in years, if ever. Only Bilbo turned away, embarrassed by the display. The rest of them looked on, grim, but satisfied. The Elves had treated their leader abominably, but he was here, at least. The healing would have to come later.

Dís walked to her brother and her sons followed in their wake. She saw Dwalin kiss Thorin’s temple briefly and heard him mutter _, “Nadadel, nadadel,”_ over and over like a prayer. Thorin seemed beyond words, his face was buried in Dwalin’s shoulder and he shook all over, whether from relief or continued torment she did not know.

Thorin raised his head just long enough to look at her and before Dís knew it, she was in his arms, or he in hers, it did not matter, she held him close and hid her face in his neck, breathing him in. He smelled strongly of sweat, sharp and chilled.

“You’re so cold,” she whispered, into the place where his tunic met his skin. He felt like a block of ice in her arms.

“I’m sorry,” Thorin rasped back, his head bowed upon her shoulder.

“Don’t,” she tried to tell him not to apologize, but her voice failed. “Don’t…”

There were more arms, more warmth around them when Fíli and Kíli crept close, laying hands and heads upon their uncle, tangling with their mother. Thorin shuddered once, violently, and moaned low. “I’m sorry,” he said again, so quietly Dís had to strain to hear; once she heard, she wished he would be silent again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I - ”

“I’m sorry,” an urgent voice interjected from below. Bilbo did not reach up to pry them apart, but his fingers twitched in a manner that indicated he dearly wished to. “We must go, quickly, before they come back down to replenish their supply of spirits.”

“Where are we going?” Bofur asked as Dís and her sons reluctantly broke away from her brother. “You still haven’t told us how we’re meant to get _out_ of here. Or is this as far as you got in your plans?”

Bilbo shifted on his feet, eyeing the Company and the surrounding barrels nervously. “This is as far as we go...without a little help from our captors.”

The dwarves looked at one another, dumbfounded. Bilbo cleared his throat and gestured to the dozen or so empty kegs, piled in a corner. “Allow me to explain…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost out of Mirkwood! And hooray, as you all saw, captivity was doing no one any favors, especially not Thorin. That's probably the last update this story will get until the week after next, I'm going abroad on Thursday and won't be back for a full week, I don't know what my internet access will be like, but hopefully I'll come back ready to write!


	38. Chapter 38

The explanation - that they were meant to float down the river in empty barrels and hope they went undetected - went over about as well as could be expected.

“Absolutely not - what sort of plan is that?” Glóin thundered, aghast. “We’ll be battered to pieces and drowned. Dwarves don’t float, halfling.”

“I don’t like it,” Dori huffed, folding his arms across his chest. Until that moment he’d been embracing Ori tightly around the neck and the younger dwarf seemed pleased to have his throat to himself, he was turning quite blue. “Haven’t you thought of something else? It took you long enough to break us out of those damnable cells, one would assume you’d had enough time on your hands to devise a dozen escape routes..”

It took a minute for Bilbo to regain his composure, he was so vexed. While those dwarves had been sitting on their bottoms for weeks, he had been run ragged trying to figure out a way of breaking them all free and _this_ was the thanks he got? The nerve.

Worn quite to the end of his patience, Bilbo drew himself up to his full height and replied, “A, ‘Thank-you Bilbo,’ wouldn’t go amiss. And I _have_ spent a great deal of time in thought and if you don’t hurry along into those barrels you’ll have to hurry along back to your cells and I’ll lock you back in, tight and snug, before the Elvenking’s guard return to do the task for me and there you’ll stay. I don’t think I could find the keys again, even if I had the inclination to try.”

A deep breath taken behind him, hard and sudden, the sound of one who’d just had a hard blow landed to the stomach, made Bilbo blanch. Thorin looked so ill that Dwalin took a half-step toward him, as if ready to prop him up and the hobbit cursed himself for a scoundrel. No doubt Thorin would throw himself head-first into the river and swim out before he would be locked away again. 

“We might not like it,” Thorin said, shifting just out of Dwalin’s reach, drawing his dignity about him like a cloak. “But we haven’t any _choice.”_

The word sounded as though it took a great effort to speak, gritted out through Thorin’s back teeth, unwillingly pushed past his resisting lips. But there it was. Dís clapped her hands briskly and nodded toward the empty barrels Bilbo had indicated, announcing with false cheer, “Let’s get to it, lads! I don’t think even drunk Elves would mistake a pack of dwarves for a dozen stout wine casks no matter how still we stood.”

Before she had gone too far, Bilbo reached out and plucked her sleeve, thrusting something up at her. “Here,” he said, breathlessly, still a bit nervous around the hard, heavy dwarven weapons of the Company, despite his growing comfort with his own little blade. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find your axe, but I believe this was your sword.”

The strong lines of the blade were simply etched and the worn guard fit comfortably in her hand, long since moulded by the familiar press of her fingers and palm, but it wasn’t her sword. It was only the sword she used. 

Despite the halfling’s former testiness and her own ire, Dís’s eyes went soft when she took the sword from Bilbo and she swept him up in an embrace with her free hand. “Thank you,” she said, setting him back on his feet. “Very much, for this and for _him.”_

“Of course,” Bilbo said, hesitating slightly before he patted Dís’s arm in a comforting manner. “Of course. Think nothing of it.” 

A few steps behind, Bifur signed something at Bofur that made his cousin laugh aloud. “Well bless me boots, if he isn’t right,” Bofur commented, jogging up to Dís’s side as Bilbo fell back, trying to hurry the rest of their companions along.

“What’d he say?” she asked, talking over the grumbling behind them as the rest of the Company trudged along in their wake. “I couldn’t see.”

“Said, ‘Here’s your chance to go to sea at last,’” Bofur informed her and Dís couldn’t help herself, she laughed hard enough that Óin knocked her on the back of the head and said if _he_ could hear her, then so could the revelers above.

Even Fíli was eyeing her oddly. “You alright, Mam?” he asked, giving her a critical once-over as she gave him a leg up into his barrel. 

Dís seized him by the chin and kissed his forehead roughly. “Not in the least, love,” she said when she pulled back. “But if you don’t laugh, you cry, eh?”

“One of Mister Balin’s?” he asked, ducking down so the top of the barrel could be secured over his head.

“Nah,” Dís shook her head. “It’s one of your Da’s.”

Kíli would have been subject to the same treatment if he hadn’t ambushed Dís before she had the chance to snag him. Both arms went around her shoulders with such force that she almost toppled over into the barrels and started an avalanche of wood and dwarves. Dís put her hands around her waist to steady them both and he kissed her wetly beneath the ear. 

“Love you, don’t drown,” he said urgently as she helped him into his own barrel. Popping his head back up at the last moment he smiled sweetly at her and said, “Dunno how the bards’ll clean this one up.”

“They’ll say we boarded a mighty barge or summat,” Dís predicted, leaning forward and kissing him on the nose. “Love you too, take your own advice.” 

“If the bards have their way, we wouldn’t have gotten caught in the first place,” Dwalin spoke up behind her. He and Thorin were standing shoulder to shoulder and Dís made a frustrated gesture at the both of them.

“Dawdling?” she asked and didn’t wait for a reply as she shooed them toward some unoccupied barrels. “Go on with you, we haven’t got all day.”

“That’s what I told him,” Thorin said, rolling his eyes, already showing a little of his old dour spirit. “He won’t go ‘til I go.”

“And he won’t go ‘til you go,” Dwalin informed Dís who crossed her arms and huffed at both of them.

“Well I’m of a mind not to go ‘til _you_ go - ” she began, but was cut off by Balin who reached up, seized her by her ear and dragged her toward a barrel. In his free hand he firmly grasped his younger brother’s wrist and marched them both toward a pair of barrels side by side.

“I’d join you in your bloody-mindedness,” Balin informed them, the patience in his voice belied by his fierce grip, “and say I’m of a mind not to go until you’re all three of you settled, but I need a bit of assistance getting in.”

“Say no more,” Thorin offered, almost courteously, but his eyes were locked on Dís and Dwalin intently. “In you get. And be quick about it.”

Dwalin got Dís around the middle before she could protest and practically threw her into a barrel. As he went to slam the lid down, it seemed he was going to let her off without another word and Dís was having none of it. She grabbed him by the front of his undershirt and, taking a leaf out of Kílil’s book urgently said, “I love you, don’t drown - and that goes double for you two!”

Balin and Thorin likely said something in response, but she only heard Dwalin’s quietly grunted, “Same to you,” as he dislodged her hand from his clothes and shoved her down in the barrel so he could afix the lid securely.

Tight, dark, enclosed spaces ordinarily did not trouble Dís at all. In fact, she rather liked them, having grown up so much on the open road, it made her feel safe to be so confined, but nothing about this wooden barrel felt safe. On the contrary the whole thing felt flimsy and she was careful not to move about too much, one hearty blow from her fists could surely splinter the wood and then…

Best not to think about it. Though she was lying still, the thought made her queasy as if she was being rolled around in some awful butter churn.

The Elves conversation when they returned on silent feet was indistinct to her, her understanding of their language so poor that she wouldn’t have gotten a word of it even if she could hear them clear as day - not with how much they seemed to be slurring and tripping over the intricacies of their own speech. 

Dís felt another giddy laugh bubbling up inside her and she bit down hard on her fist to muffle it. Sheer nervous laughter it was, verging on hysteria and she felt tears stinging at her eyes as the full impossibility of their plan hit her, crouched there in the stifling dark. The image of Thorin’s face, his white cheeks and hollow eyes seemed to float up before her though she knew she was looking at nothing. The sour smell of old wine filled her nose and she thought if she didn’t cry, she might be sick, so she breathed shallowly, through her nose and out her mouth.

A lurching sensation made her stomach churn and she swallowed down a rush of bile - then she was left breathless as she was spun and slammed against the side of the barrel when a mighty heave sent them all crashing down one over the other. 

_Please make it stop, please make it stop, please make it stop._

The rolling stopped and was replaced by the weightless, fluttering in her bowels that indicated a drop. There was a mighty splashing and rocking and for a second Dís was convinced that Glóin’s dismal thoughts about the buoyancy of dwarves was right and she was going to sink to the bottom of the river like a stone. Then the downward pressure ease and Dís’s barrel, like those of her kith and kin, rose to the surface, bobbing in the current. 

Within, she had no idea which way was up and which was down. The seal on the barrel had been broken, the lid was not air-tight, as evidence by the trickle of water that soaked her hair and tunic, but did not fill the space around her, but that little bit of wet was enough to set Dís to panicking. Without a thought for stealth, she slammed her hands hard on the lid, once to make it splinter, twice to shatter it, the top popping off in pieces as she stuck her head out and took a deep breath of night air. 

It calmed her stomach, if not her heart. Swirled this way and that by the rushing river, she only caught glimpses of the others in the dark and at times the rapids grew so rough it was all she could do to keep her head above water. 

A quick glance around showed her that many of the Company had done the same as her, or else their lids had come off on their own. The river drew them fast away from Thranduil’s dungeons, in the darkness, they were practically invisible. That did not make the tumble downstream any less heart-pounding, through it all Dís kept her ears perked, trying to catch anything that sounded like the rush of bows shot from the surrounding trees or the whisper of movement around them, but the rushing of the water and the occasional involuntary shouts of her fellows drowned out any other errant noises.

Bashed and battered they were when their tumultuous journey down the river slowed. The rushing waters gave way to a calm lake from which flowed dozens of tributaries. Fourteen barrels bumped up against the shore and fourteen dwarves, miserable, cold and soaked to the skin crawled out of them in the feeble pre-dawn light. 

Dís merely rolled herself onto the bank, lay down in the sand and put one arm over her eyes, trying to stop the world from spinning. The sound of retching behind her reassured her that she was in good company as far as bearing a barrel-ride ill. A groan beside her head she recognized immediately and she chanced a turn of the head to see Fíli, curled on his side. 

_“Apples,”_ he moaned wretchedly. “Never again. I’ll never even look at an apple again. Or a mug of cider. No more Durin’s Day celebrations for me. _Ever_ again.”

“That wasn’t so bad!” Kíli. Of course Kíli. He was ankle-deep in lake water, beaming down at his mother and brother, hair plastered to his head, looking as though he’d just had the time of his life. “I could have another go!”

“Make yourself useful,” Dís managed, swallowing hard and trying to breathe evenly. “Scout around, see where we’ve turned up - _if_ we’ve been followed, have you got your bow?”

“Aye, Bilbo fetched it for me, but I’m low on arrows,” he confirmed, merrily, loudly and if she didn’t love him so much she’d be of half a mind to box his ears for being so cheerful when she felt like shite. 

“Don’t waste them, then,” she counseled and Kíli was off like a shot, running right past her head. There was nothing for it, Dís knew, getting to her feet and losing the contents of her last meal in the river. Wherever he’d gotten that penchant for water travel, it hadn’t anything to do with her side of the family. Maybe Víli had been meant for life as a sailor after all. 

Bofur certainly seemed to have done alright, he was at her side, holding her hair away from her face as she washed her mouth out with river water. Dís was feeling just ill and churlish enough to resent the attention. “Alright?” she asked and off his smile and nod added, with less than her usual fondness, “You Broadbeams are _uncanny.”_

“Eh, not all of us,” he added, throwing a worried look over his shoulder. Dís followed his line of sight and saw Bifur sitting by himself, shoulders hunched, hands pressed over his eyes while Bombur hovered anxiously beside him, not touching him, but speaking very quietly. “The jostling and the dark, I think. Don’t sit well with him.”

Ashamed with herself for being so ornery when there was worse suffering to be had, Dís pressed her lips together and nodded curtly. Reaching over, she squeezed Bofur’s shoulder in wordless thanks and he smiled at her, ruffling her wet hair. 

Odd as it seemed, she felt better for having been sick and looked around, taking stock of the rest of her companions. Balin looked pale, but otherwise well, Glóin was lying by the bank and hadn’t moved since he escaped his barrel, save for the rising and falling of his chest, he was awfully green. Ori and Nori seemed a little wobbly on their feet, Dori was wringing the sodden ends of his hair out and complaining - a swift, sure recovery for him, it seemed. 

Dwalin had lost the battle with his stomach and was splashing water on his face while Thorin sat with his head propped up on his hand, attention diverted by Óin who was thumping on Bilbo’s back gingerly, though the hobbit took his blows with a dismayed cry of pain.

Of all of them, Bilbo seemed to have come out the worst. He was dripping wet and shivering violently, coughing up mouthfuls of water on the ground. 

“Get it up, laddie, get it up,” Óin said in his brisk, no-nonsense manner. “You can ill afford a bout of pneumonia, not in this wood.”

Bilbo’s only response was a sputtering cough and another shiver of cold so violent Dís thought he might shake out of his skin. The water was cold, of course, the late autumn air wasn’t helping matters and the lack of sunlight served to make her even less comfortable, but that was all she suffered from, discomfort. Hobbits were thin-skinned, they’d proof of that a dozen times over on this quest; how was he to fare against a dragon?

Then again, she mused as Bilbo sat heavily upon the ground, shrugging out of his soaked coat, then changing his mind and putting it back on, he had broken them out of the Elvenking’s dungeons. That was something anyhow, even if they hadn’t any idea where they - 

“Boats!” Kíli shouted loud enough to wake the dead. “A boat! A boat’s coming, what do we do?”

Thorin was on his feet in an instant. “Elves?” he barked, furious. Orcist was long gone, but Bilbo managed to recover his old sword, Deathless, which Kíli had taken to bearing. Armed with only his bow, the young dwarf jumped the last few feet down to where the Company was grouped, drawing those few weapons that remained to them. 

“Who else?” Kíli snapped back rudely. In contrast to his carefree attitude of minutes ago, he seemed furious. “The sayings are right, never trust an Elf! It’s not a big boat, but it’s heading right toward us, and swift! I can’t believe- Tauriel said - ”

“Tauriel said _what?”_ his mother asked suspiciously. If that tricky little she-Elf tried to manipulate her sweet-natured sons, she’d have her ears cut off, smoked and worn around her neck as jewelry. 

But what Tauriel said remained a mystery for a moment as the bow of a small sailing vessel rounded the bend, rendered ghostly by the early morning mist. Nori was first to realize that though Kíli’s eyes might have been sharp, he had also made an error in his assessment of their pursuer. 

“It’s a Man,” he hissed, hiding his fleshing knives behind his back instinctively. “Just a Man!”

“Stand down,” Thorin ordered and the Company lowered their weapons slowly, but did not toss them aside. Men might not have imprisoned them, but they were still hardly to be trusted. 

There were few places to hide in the embankment and less time to search any out before the Man steered his little dinghy closer to the shore and hallooed them. “Who’s there?” he called out, lifting a lantern, though it did little to cut through the darkness, it did illuminate his features.

His skin was sun-browned, despite the lateness of the year, his hair fell in damp curls to his shoulders. There was a shrewd sort of hawkishness about his eyes, that bespoke a difficult life, lived carefully. His clothes were simple homespun, but he was well layered against the chill. 

“Who are you?” he asked again. “Children? But so far from town, so late - ”

Thorin stepped forward, but Balin beat him to it, standing before him, hands raised, palms out, showing he was unarmed. 

“Not children,” he said with a sardonic smile in his voice. It was a useful tone that saved many a negotiation on the verge of descending into a fistfight. “Dwarves.”

The Man stilled and the lantern dropped down a few inches before he held it aloft again, squinting hard at them. “Dwarves?” he repeated, at once wondering and suspicious. “But there haven’t been Dwarves in this region in a hundred years or more.”

“Nevertheless,” Balin replied smoothly, “here we are. Goodman, would you be so kind as to tell us _where_ we are? We’re weary from travel and it’s so easy for us to get turned around aboveground.”

Dís, as ever, when she heard Balin speak to an outsider, was struck by how well he managed to make himself seem harmless. True, even among their own people he was lauded more as a diplomat than a warrior, but the fact remained that he was deadly, a son of Fundin through and through and a proud Dwarf besides. That he could so easily act the part of the kindly elder without letting a hint of his true steel shine through. It was a skill Thorin had yet to master, one Dís was sure her brother never would. 

Balin’s unthreatening manner seemed to put the Man at ease as well. “You’re not anywhere in particular, Master Dwarf, not at the moment. About three miles out from Lake-Town, if you follow the eastern-most tributary. Don’t know if that helps orient you or not, it’s no grand city.” 

The name Lake-Town held no significance for Dís, but Balin nodded once to himself and Óin drew closer, cocking his head, straining to hear. Thorin and Dwalin also exchanged a glance between them.

“Three miles from Lake-Town,” Balin repeated, quietly, consideringly. His tone was light, but his eyes were troubled. “My, my.” 

The Man on the boat was taking them all in, his suspicion giving way to curiosity. “Is it on your route?”

“Very much so,” Balin smiled at him, recovered from his serious contemplation. “Easternmost tributary - ah, forgive us,” he said, interrupted in his conversation by a loud, well-timed sneeze from Bilbo. “One of my companions is unwell.”

“Did you swim here?” the Man asked as the bow of his craft bumped up against the shoreline and he could see their wet things more clearly. “It didn’t rain last night.”

“We had a bit of a - well, it hardly matters,” Balin waved the question off as if it was insignificant. “The fact is, we are rather thoroughly soaked and our hobbit friend bears it ill.”

The Man seemed even more shocked by news of Hobbits than he was of Dwarves. Coming all the way to the prow of his vessel, he leaned over to give himself a closer look. “I thought halflings were creatures of legend.” 

Bilbo sneezed again and wiped his nose on his sleeve, looking disgusted with himself for such behavior, but unable to think of an alternative. Bofur’s overcoat was long gone and could no longer be used to supply impromptu handkerchiefs. To think he’d wrinkled his nose in disgust at the well-intentioned gesture. 

“I wouldn’t say legendary,” Bilbo sniffled, trying to haul himself to his feet. A strong hand was under his elbow, helping him and he looked up to mutter his thanks, but the words caught in his throat when he saw that Thorin had come to his aid. 

To his amazement the king was _smiling_ at him. Oh, it was a sad approximation of a smile, to be sure, a broken thing with sharp edges. But it was a smile and when he saw it Bilbo forgot to shiver.

“You do yourself little credit,” Thorin said quietly, still keeping his hand on the hobbit’s arm, propping him up. 

Bilbo was speechless. Again, he underestimated his companions, sold them short. Thorin had been suffering terrible the past weeks, alone and isolated. Bilbo visited him as often as he could, for as long as he could, but he was only just their burglar after all, not kin, not even kith and there was only so much he could do to lift his spirits, aside from relate news from the other captives. 

Dís wanted Thorin to know she loved him, though Bilbo wondered why it bore repeating since there could be no doubt of her devotion. Fíli and Kíli wanted him told that the food was very good and they were well. Dwalin, oddly, being that the was such a stalwart who never questions Thorin’s commands in the wild, only wanted Bilbo to relay orders. 

_”Tell him to **eat** ,”_ was Dwalin’s immediate reply when asked if there was anything he wanted to tell his leader. _“And sleep. And for Durin’s sake, **breathe.** And tell him he doesn’t mould the mountains.”_

The last bit was especially strange, but Bilbo dutifully parroted it back to Thorin who sagged slightly and seemed momentarily torn between laughter and tears. In the end he neither laughed nor cried, but nodded, thanked Bilbo and ate the bread that had gone hard around the edges and the cold meat, neglected since the guards brought it to him. 

Bilbo never imagined that he filled any role more important than that of messenger. To be sure, he rambled a bit, about life in the Shire sometimes and Thorin was persuaded to tell a few more stories - including one amusing tale about Dwalin taking a fall from a cliffside and Dís acting as nursemaid. Well, Thorin seemed to find it funny, Bilbo thought it sounded harrowing. And another they both smiled over, about a bit of merry havoc Fíli and Kíli and Ori cooked up with their friends in the West. But it wasn’t as though Bilbo himself had much to do with keeping Thorin in good cheer, it was the words and memories of his friends and family that did that. 

Yet now, with Thorin keeping him upright, _smiling_ at him despite the fact that he could not possibly be recovered from his ordeal, Bilbo began to think that he had been more help than he realized. 

“If Lake-Town is on your way,” the Man in the boat said slowly. “I could offer you safe passage, faster than walking, though no less wet.” 

Bilbo was about to respond with an enthusiastic, _Yes, please!_ but another coughing fit made that impossible. Little matter since, as Thorin thumped his back (gently, as Óin had, but he’d still have bruises, Bilbo was sure), Balin stepped forward and made a cordial bow. “That’s very kind of you, but we haven’t the money for fare. Our misadventure in the river robbed us of many necessaries.” 

“No need to pay,” the Man shrugged. “It’s on my way.” 

“Very generous,” Balin remarked and some of the Company ‘hmmed,’ in agreement, though they did not sound overjoyed at the prospect. “I’d have your name, if you would indulge me.” 

“Name’s Bard,” the Man replied, a smile quirking his lips. It seemed he found Balin charming, which was, of course, the point. “And yours?” 

“Balin,” the Dwarf smiled, though he did not add the customary offer of his service to the Man. One by one, the Company boarded the small boat, Bofur pausing to give Bilbo some assistance inside. Not all of them could play the part of grateful guests as well as Balin; Glóin naturally did little more than grunt in Bard’s general direction, in lieu of thanking him for the promise of safe passage. 

“What sort of cargo you usually carry?” Nori asked in a would-be-curious tone. 

The Man smiled a little mysteriously. “Today, Dwarves." 

Dwalin caught Thorin’s arm before they boarded, the last of the Company to do so. “How do we know he won’t betray us?” he muttered into Thorin’s ear as Bard retrieved a flannel to wrap around Bilbo. 

“We don’t,” was Thorin’s grim reply. They exchanged a look and Dwalin said nothing else as he boarded. _We have no choice,_ he read easily enough in his friend’s face. 

The thought, _I can’t go on much longer,_ was better hidden, but Dwalin fancied he could see Thorin’s very soul in his eyes. Dís was standing by, her hands outstretched to aid them in coming aboard. Thorin took her right, Dwalin her left and as one they clambered into the deck of the boat and sailed into the unknown. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ARGH. You might have noticed the distinct lack of an Orcs v. Elves v. Dwarves battle in this chapter, mostly because I couldn't be arsed. I'm sure the ride was harrowing enough without all that craziness (I'm also disregarding a few of the spoilers I've heard about what's going down in Laketown because it doesn't fit my story arc). So yeah, ignoring both movie and book canon for the sake of getting everyone moved along, I hope you guys don't mind!


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** For **misgendering** (of cis characters who are not offended, but it still happens) and for minor **self-harm**. Because Men have issues with dwarven gender and Thorin needs some R  & R.

Most of the Company sat heavily on the floor, not having quite recovered from their adventures in the barrels, certainly not well enough to bear the rocking and pitching of the little craft with any stoicism. Dwalin, Thorin and Dís were standing, but very close to the side of the vessel, steadying themselves with hands upon the sides, clearly ready to duck their heads over at a moment’s notice.

The journey was conducted largely in silence and, in time, they saw the crooked spires of buildings rising up over the tree line. Dís squinted at at the horizon and muttered under her breath to Thorin, “Have I been here before?”

Her brother shook her head, also staring into the distance. “No. Esgaroth was a place of little consequence, a stopover on the way to Dale, they’d unload the best cargo onto smaller boats for the trip up the river. They kept the town in gold from toll-taking, as I remember. Grandfather always complained that the Masters were money-grubbing, charged too much. He was worried it would discourage traders from having dealings with us.”

“Smugglers made a pretty penny,” Dwalin muttered quietly to the pair of them, keeping one eye on Nori who was trying his hardest to look as if he wasn’t paying them any attention. “Aunt Dísa never much minded about them, they weren’t altogether troublesome. Only had the Mountain Guard show them what’s what if they got greedy, asked more than the going price in the open market. Or if things got violent.”

“It wasn’t anywhere worth going,” Thorin said finally, turning away from the prow of the ship and staring into the black water beneath them. “Not for us.”

After a few deep breaths to settle her stomach, Dís took stock of the rest of their number. They all seemed mostly recovered, albeit dripping wet, with the exception of poor Bilbo. He was huddled beneath a blanket, shivering wretchedly. Fíli and Kíli each sat one on either side of him, trying to warm him up a bit.

“You ought to have taken a barrel for yourself,” Fíli said. His advice was not altogether welcome.

“There wasn’t time!” the hobbit sniffed, then coughed into his hand. “Oh, I feel half drowned. Do you know, we have a saying in the Shire, we learn it from birth. _Never venture East._ Good, sensible advice."

“If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s not much of a saying,” Kíli replied after a pause to consider the matter. “And none too helpful, neither, what if you’ve got to take an easterly path one day?”

“That isn’t the...oh, never mind,” Bilbo rolled his eyes and tucked his knees under his chin, the picture of absolute misery.

Bofur chanced a smile at him and offered, “But you haven’t drowned. That’s something, eh?”

Bilbo’s only response was a disgruntled sneeze. 

The Man smirked as he navigated the craft down the narrow river. “If you don’t mind my asking, Master Hobbit, why did you venture East?”

Bilbo looked from Bard to Thorin anxiously. Upon perceiving the minutest shake of Thorin’s head, he stammered, “I, ah, well...I...wanted a change. That’s all.”

Bard nodded, apparently satisfied with that answer, but Dís noticed the way his eyes lingered upon all of them, the question within them that he did not ask, _Where does your journey end?_

The city - if it could be called a city - consisted of rickety homes and businesses made of wood, practically spilling into the waterways that wove between them, like dark icy streets. It was too generous a thing to call them canals, the eaves and spindly garrets seemed in danger of falling off their moorings and landing on top of all their heads. Some of the Company held their breaths as Bard passed beneath them, though the structures held. Not a one of them was above four stories in height. 

A squalid little town it was, but some of the straight-backed tension in Bard’s shoulders eased as they neared it and his wary eyes crinkled in mirth when a lantern, held at the height of a grown dwarf’s head, bobbed and waved on the edge of an uneven little pier.

“If it isn’t my own night watchman,” Bard hailed the slight figure with a fond smile.

 _His son,_ Dís thought immediately. They were too far away for her to make out any of the child’s features, but there was no mistaking Bard’s meaning when he said ‘my own.’ She’d heard the peculiar affection in his tone countless times from her friends when they spoke of their children and they’d heard it just as often from her when she spoke of Fíli and Kíli. 

The boy was in the last grasp of Mannish childhood, tall, slight, but with a bit of stubborn fat clinging to his face that made round his cheeks, sprayed o’er with freckles. His clothes were clean, but worn and the sleeves of his coat hung inches away from his wrist. 

Dori shifted automatically for a sewing kit he no longer had; it was impossible to stop him picking at loose threads or folding down twisted collars; Dís remembered him practically prying her out of a coat with a frayed hem once, he insisted on tidying the ragged edge up before she went on her way. To this day she had no idea whether he did it out of concern or because he found unkempt clothing an eyesore and wanted to make himself feel better. Maybe a bit of both.

“I was sent me out to find you,” the boy said with a proud grin. “The morning being so bad the girls thought...they thought…”

The child trailed off with wide eyes when he saw the cargo his father was hauling. “What are _those_ , Da?” he asked wonderingly.

Dori stopped looking at the boy’s coat and instead gave the child himself a glare of deepest consternation. “We are Dwarves,” he huffed. “That’s _who_ , not _what_ , I’ll thank you to remember.”

The boy’s mouth dropped open and his eyes only got wider. _“Dwarves,”_ he breathed in awe, holding the lantern out to get a better look at them. “I thought there weren’t anymore left, not in the whole world. I thought the fire turned them all to stone.”

The glares of fourteen Dwarves were enough to stop the child’s tongue before he said anything more.

“Bain,” Bard spoke firmly. “Back to the house with you. Step swiftly, now. _Go.”_

The boy only hesitated a minute more, trying to lock the picture of the odd little people in his father’s boat in his mind for always, just in case he should never see their like again. Then he turned, thin-soled shoes slipping slightly in the frost on the pier.

“As I said, Dwarves have been strangers to this land for over a hundred years,” Bard said by way of explanation for his son's discourtesy. “The stories say they all perished when the city of Dale burned and their Mountain destroyed by the dragon. According to the legends, they wouldn’t leave their gold behind, they tried to fill their pockets with as much as they could carry and so were victims of the beast’s wrath.”

“They were not,” Thorin snarled back. A muscle in his jaw was working dangerously and Bard held his hands up defensively. “They _did_ not.”

“My apologies,” Bard replied and sounded sincere. “Again, it’s a story...passed down, parents to children, there are none living who remember that day. We they - the Dwarves of Erebor -were they kin of yours?”

Thorin was furious and as ever when he was furious, he did not trust himself to speak. Luckily, Balin remained calm, though his blue eyes lost their kindly twinkle and his voice was hard as iron when he spoke for his king. 

“Aye,” he said gravely. “Some.”

Bard nodded and wisely said nothing more about it. Tying the boat up by one of the ice-encrusted posts that held up the dock he indicated that the Company should disembark. “Come, my home is not far - it isn’t much, but your friend will be out of the chill anyway.”

“Thank you,” Balin said, once again the only one who could be trusted to speak. “You are most generous.” 

It was Balin who helped Bilbo up. To be fair, he practically lifted him off his feet and would have carried him the rest of the way to Bard’s home if the hobbit had not dug his heels in and insisted on walking along with the rest of them. The streets were dark and devoid of people. Bard moved quickly on his long legs, the Dwarves had to jog to keep up and the Man’s dark head turned from left to right as if expecting an ambush. 

Dís felt some of the queasiness return to her stomach, unsettled in a way she couldn’t identify. Dwalin was staring at Bard with hard brown eyes, his fists clenching and unclenching, evidently craving the weight of the knuckle dusters again. 

“Did Bilbo save either of your axes?” she whispered as they were hurried along down one narrow alley, then another.

Dwalin shook his head. “I’ll make more,” he grunted.

Thorin almost fell out of step with them; he looked at the empty places over Dwalin’s shoulders where Grasper and Keeper usually were and his face lost some of his fury. Those weapons had been baptized in the blood of Orcs at Azanulbizar and Dwalin’s constant companions ever since, as much a part of the warrior as his own arms.

“I’ve lost things dearer than that in my life,” Dwalin said, nudging Thorin forcefully in the shoulder to keep him moving. “If a few knives and axes are all we’re leaving to rot in those dungeons, I’m grateful - I’ll fashion a pair of knives out of that Man’s _bones_ if he’s leading us into danger on this chase.”

“I’ve got a dagger,” Dís offered, quickening her strides. “The Elves didn’t take it off me, do you - ”

“Nah,” Dwalin shook his head as Bard ducked into a doorway, removing his keys from his belt and easing open a well-oiled lock. “Keep it. Never know when it might come in useful.” 

If danger was to greet them, they would not find it in Bard’s home. They were ushered with all due haste into a large kitchen where Bain was joined by two dark-eyed girls, one smaller than him, still wearing her night things. The other was dressed and older, nearly grown, holding a basket full of small brown eggs.

“Tilda,” Bard said when the littlest one ran to his side. “My youngest. And Sigrid, my eldest. You’ve already met my son Bain.”

“Sigrid,” Thorin repeated roughly, staring at the girl with an intensity that made her go pale. Unlike her sister she stood her ground, but the grip on the basket of eggs in her arms tightened. Before Dís could smooth it over, Thorin remembered his manners and when he spoke again, his voice was less harsh, his stare less pointed. “Excuse me, it’s a very fine name.”

“Thank you,” the girl said, automatically, her death grip on the eggs loosening. “My mother’s. And her mother’s before her.”

“A very worthy tradition,” Dís smiled. The girl chanced a small one back, but looked at her father, a thousand questions in her eyes. 

“They’re traveling, I met them after a misadventure on the river,” Bard explained. “I am right in assuming you’ve nowhere to stay?”

He spoke to Balin, evidently believing him the leader of their little troupe. With a mere flicker of his eyes up at Thorin, Balin softly replied, “We do not. Nor can we repay you for your hospitality, I am afraid.”

Sigrid inched away from them all, moving closer to the hearth where a fire was roaring, but Bombur got in her way and held out his hand for her basket. 

“Let me, lass,” he offered, holding out his hand for the basket of eggs. Apprehension was written all over her face, but her father gave her a small nod and after a moment’s hesitation she gingerly handed them over. Bombur smiled very warmly at her. “I’ve ten wee ones meself, I know a thing or two about breakfasting a crowd. Have you got any milk? Cheese? Spuds? A few eggs can go a long way if you coax ‘em enough.”

Sigrid looked again to her father. Bard did not seem to know how to respond. “Er...we have that,” he said, “but you needn’t - ”

“Consider it done!” Bofur offered brightly. “You give us a place to hang our hats, s’only fitting we make some breakfast for you. Eh, Bilbo?”

Despite his unhappy state, the hobbit managed a wan smile. “Don’t worry about the plates,” he advised Bard. “They’re really very careful.”

Tilda peeked around her father’s side and gasped. _“That’s_ not a Dwarf,” she observed with a delighted expression. “What are you?”

“A Baggins,” Bilbo replied, inclining his soggy curls in her direction. “Of the Shire, Bilbo’s my name. A pleasure to meet you.”

“How old are you?” she asked interestedly. “You’re awfully little, but you’ve got an old face.”

“Tilda!” Bard reprimanded, but Bilbo waved off the offended tone, gathering his blanket more tightly around his shoulders.

“Fifty-one,” he replied evenly, watching her eyes widen. 

Bain, standing silently by, dropped his mouth open and gawped at Bilbo. “You aren’t!” he exclaimed in disbelief. “Are you?”

Bilbo nodded, then sneezed. “Excuse me. I am, my constitution is perhaps not very well-suited for adventuring.”

“I’ll heat some water for a bath...and see if I can’t find you something else to wear,” Bard said, half to himself. “Sigrid, Bain, Tilda, come with me.”

The three disappeared up a flight of stairs, Tilda most reluctantly. She dragged her feet and twisted her head around to stare at the Company over her shoulder, seemingly nervous that they would disappear by the time she came back downstairs. Bombur, Bofur and Dori decided to make themselves busy preparing breakfast while the others took stock of the house. All save the youngest among them; Fíli, Kíli and Ori were start at Bilbo almost as hard as Bain had been. 

“You’re fifty-one?” Kíli asked. _“Fifty-one?”_

“Yes,” Bilbo replied, a trifle annoyed. “Too old, perhaps, to go running off into the blue, but you had me along and I think I’ve done rather well, all things - ”

“Are you even old enough to sign a contract?” Fíli asked him, then turned to Balin, worried. “Is it binding without a guardian to sign off on it?”

“Excuse me!” Bilbo cut in. “It most certainly _is_ binding and I do not need a guardian - what’s come over you?”

“How old are Hobbits when they’re considered of age?” Ori asked before Fíli had the chance to reply. “Fifty? _Forty-five?”_

“Thirty-three,” Bilbo replied, whether he sniffled because his nose was running or with disdain was difficult to assess, but the lads gawped at him. Fortunately, Bard and his children returned with a few pails of well water to set to warming before the younglings could ask any more stupid questions.

“But he’s _fifty_ , Mam,” Kíli muttered into his mother’s ear once Bilbo was out of earshot. Though their hobbit turned pink-cheeked and objected to being _guarded_ while he bathed, Glóin insisted on standing by, a knife rescued from the Elvenking’s dungeons tucked firmly in his belt all the while. 

“And full-grown among his own people - middle aged among his own people,” Dís hissed back at him. “Smarten up and stop making a spectacle, go do something useful with yourself.”

Dís occupied herself with assisting Bombur with breakfast, though it was awfully tempting to insist on standing by Bilbo, for no other reason than offending his modesty amused her and she was desperate for a laugh. Bard’s children had wandered back downstairs without their father and Tilda, who was dressed haphazardly, missing her shoes, seemed especially enchanted to be surrounded by odd-looking adults who were just her size. 

“Can I help? What are you doing? That bread’s gone stale,” she asked and informed all in one breath, peering at the loaf of rock-hard bread Bombur was slicing with knives that had seen sharper days.

“That’s alright, it’s why I asked your sister where the milk is kept,” Bombur said. “Soak it a bit, it’ll be toothsome ere long, lassie. Bit ‘o bacon, some beans, makes for a fine meal.”

Tilda wrinkled her nose. “I hate beans,” she told Bombur seriously.

Dís, who was draining the offending beans that had been left to soak overnight, bit back a smile; Bombur was _this_ close to ruffling the girl’s hair or tweaking her nose as he might one of his own dwarflings. 

“Me brother works wonders with beans,” Bofur reassured her with a grin. “I’m no great patron o’the bean meself, lass, but I’ll eat anything Bombur sets to cooking.”

“You’re brothers?” Bain asked interestedly. “You don’t look a thing alike.”

Bombur and Bofur swapped grins. “Ah, well, that’s down to me mother’s side - Firebeard blood, that’s what give him the fine red hair. Me father were pure Broadbeam, hence be own dull locks. Bifur, what color hair did auntie have? Can’t hardly recall, shame to say.”

Bifur, chopping onions with expert precision, paused and looked up to rapidly sign something at Bofur. Bard’s children looked fascinated, but Sigrid went slightly pale when she noticed the axe in Bifur’s skull - then pale when she realized she was staring. Bold Tilda hardly cared that she was staring and in fact walked closer to Bifur to have a better look. 

“Ah,” Bofur nodded at Bifur. “Black, o’course. As a raven’s wing.”

Bifur returned to the onions, Tilda did not seem to know where to look, either at his nimble fingers or that rusty blade. 

“What happened to your head?” she asked. “Can’t you talk?”

 _“Tillie!”_ Sigrid hissed. “Stop! That’s impolite.”

Bifur stopped working and smiled at the girl, then signed his response to Bofur in iglishmek who spoke to the girls, “Say’s it’s alright the lass being curious. Nah, he can’t talk Mannish speech no more. As for the axe, he got it in a war with Orcs, safer to keep it where it is, no telling what else might’ve come out with it, if the healers tried pulling it out.”

“Oh,” Tilda nodded rather solemnly. She fidgeted on the spot, trying with all her might to bite her tongue, but simply could not keep from asking, “Does it hurt?”

Dís handed the bowl of beans to Bombur and the two exchanged a look; she rather liked Bard’s youngest daughter. Bifur’s smile didn’t fade and he signed his reply to his cousin. “Sometimes. Not right now.”

“Oh,” Tilda repeated, but it wasn’t a moment before she grinned. “That’s good! That it doesn’t hurt now. What are you all doing here? Da wouldn’t say, he only said you were traveling, but traveling to where? Where did you all come from? There haven’t been Dwarves here for ages and ages, we thought they were all gone, didn’t we Bain?”

Her brother remembered with an obvious sense of unease how hard the dwarves had glared at him before when he mentioned believing that all the Dwarves were gone. Yet the queer creatures seemed to have become more cordial since finding their way into the house, so Bain chanced a small smile, “Er...a bit. I’ve never seen a Dwarf before today, I - I’d have thought you’d be smaller. Like your friend with the...feet.”

“He’s no Dwarf, but a Hobbit,” Fíli told him. “I’d never met a Hobbit before I met Bilbo. They’re alright. A little...slow-moving, but - ”

“Ey!” the sound of Thorin’s harsh reprimand made Fíli color above his beard and shuffle his feet. “He’s run himself ragged these past weeks. Over and above the terms of his contract, so mind your tongue.”

“Aye,” Fíli nodded immediately. “Sorry, Uncle, I wasn’t thinking.”

Sigrid jumped when Thorin raised his voice and Bain silently mouthed _’Contract?’_ but Tilda hardly seemed to notice the sudden tension. 

“He’s your uncle?” Her curious hazel eyes lit on Dís with understanding and she asked Fíli. “Is _he_ your Papa? Are you his brother?”

“He’s my brother,” Dís nodded with an ironic smile. “And that yellow-haired lad with the big mouth is my son, my eldest, but I’m _not_ his father.”

The girl seemed confused until Kíli came up behind Dís, slinging an arm over her shoulder and kissing her cheek, “She’s our Ma, miss, - big mouth over there is _my_ brother.”

“I need a chart,” Sigrid remarked, tucking a stray lock of brown hair behind her ears. “Are you all kin to one another?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Nori came round Dís’s other side and kissed her cheek, earning himself an elbow in the ribs. “All kin from the Maker’s hands, eh?”

“You look like a drowned rat,” she informed him pleasantly, tugging on his long, unbound beard. 

“Is he your son too?” Tilda asked and Dís laughed for a _long_ time. So long Nori started to look a little annoyed.

“You aren’t _that_ young,” he muttered as he removed his arm from her shoulders and slunk off to steal a bit of what Bombur was baking out of the fire. 

With a gesture at Dori and Ori who were setting the table for breakfast, Dís said, “Nori belongs to _those_ two over there.”

“Aha!” Tilda’s eyes sparkled as she clapped her hands as she counted off the dwarves, beginning with Bofur and Bombur, “They’re brothers and cousins to the gentleman with the axe and _your_ brother is that one with the lovely hair and the light and dark haired ones are your babies - “

“Babies!” Fíli shouted indignantly, tugging at his beard as if to assure himself it was there, a mark of his status as a grown Dwarf. Kíli had very little beard to tug, but he folded his arms and looked outraged nevertheless.

“ - and _his_ nephews and the one with the silly hair is _her_ daughter,” she finished triumphantly, pointing at Dori and grinning up at Dís for approval. “Did I do it right?”

Dís’s reserves of willpower were utterly exhausted by their captivity, the trek down the river and subsequent arrival in Lake-town. Her resolve crumpled and she reached out to ruffle Tilda’s hair. The child did not flinch, only beamed, pleased with herself. 

“Nearly, and it was an excellent effort,” Dís reassured her. “Only that one with the silver hair is the one with the silly hair’s _brother.”_

Tilda’s smiled turned into a frown and she looked between Dís and Dori, puzzled. “But…” she said, trying to come up with words enough to explain her confusion. “But you’re bigger than him and _you’re_ a lady.”

“I’m bigger than most,” Dís acknowledged, feeling a little lighter in her heart when she saw Thorin smiling, just a little, at Tilda’s confusion. “But it’s naught to do with being a lady or not, just is what it is.”

At that opportune moment, Dwalin walked in and asked if he could make himself useful. Tilda’s mouth dropped open and she stared and stared, tugging at Dís’s sleeve, “Is _that one_ a lady?”

“Nah,” Thorin said, sidling up to the pair of them and giving Tilda a crooked little smile which she returned with a full-on grin. “That one’s not a lady - but it’s always better to ask than to assume, lass, there’s the lesson you can take to heart.”

Nodding eagerly, Tilda pertly replied, “I surely shall, Master Dwarf - and Mistress Dwarf - what are your names? I probably won’t remember them all, but I’ll do my best.”

“I’m called Dís,” Dís replied. “And my brother’s called Thorin.”

Tilda nodded and skipped away, no doubt eager to make her inventory of the rest of the Company. She had moved on to Fíli and Kíli who were likely explaining the myriad ways in which they were _not_ babies, but grown Dwarves who could sign contracts and everything, but Dís only had eyes for Thorin. Now that he was standing by her side she saw again how very pale he was and caught the slightly tremors that made his hands shake. His brow was damp, not with lake water, but sweat. How long had it been since he’d properly slept?

His hands were clasped loosely before him, but they were far from still. Reflexively he was digging his fingernails into the torn and ragged flesh on his fingertips, peeling back skin and scabs. Making himself bleed and, Dís realized with just as much annoyance as alarm. Keeping himself awake. 

Bard descended the stairs, pausing on the last step letting his gaze take in the whole of the kitchen, from his freshly-laid table, to the dwarves stirring pots on the hearth and his children wrapped up in conversation with his visitors. He had the look of a man caught in a dream. 

Dwalin approached him and he straightened up, serious and slightly wary again. “Have you got a spare room?” he asked bluntly. “The hobbit’ll want a place to rest, he’s come over ill by the look of it and some of us are feeling the road more than others.” 

“I surely do, it’s a big house,” Bard said, almost apologetically. “For five, I mean. There are other rooms, not much used, they aren’t grand, but it’s a place to rest your head.” 

With a satisfied nod, Dwalin returned to Thorin’s side and slipped a hand around his elbow. The gesture looked friendly to outside eyes, even courteous, but Dís saw Thorin’s arm tense as he tried to move away and noted how Dwalin’s fingers gripped him tight enough to bruise if he wasn't careful. 

“No nonsense,” Dwalin said firmly. “You look dead on your feet.” 

Dís effectively pinned Thorin between them and they frog-marched him off to one of the rooms Bard indicated. It was cold, there was no fire in the hearth, but once Dwalin got Thorin sitting on the bed, he took a place right next him, their shoulders flush. 

“Go on,” he said impatiently. “Or do you want me to unlace your boots as well?” 

Thorin did have fight enough left in him to argue. “No breakfast?” was all he asked before he bent to loosen his boots, wet and heavy. 

“I’ll be sure the vultures don’t take the lot,” Dís reassured him from the doorway. 

Thorin paused once his boots and damp socks were off. As he stared between the two of them the shadows in his eyes did not exactly lift, but they became imperceptibly lighter. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. “Just...well. Thank you.” 

Dwalin squeezed the back of his friend’s neck with deepest affection. “Of course,” he replied. “Now lie down before I knock you down.” 

The bed was just large enough for two grown dwarves to lay side by side. Dwalin sat up a bit, but kept one arm tucked around Thorin’s shoulders, as much to keep him from wandering off in addition to fraternal affection. With his free left hand he clumsily signed to Dís, _Go. I have first watch._

Smiling softly, she tip-toed to the door and shut it quietly behind her, then rejoined the rest of her companions in Bard’s overcrowded kitchen where all three of their host’s children were gathered around their father attempting to explain how each of their visitors were related to one another, complete with a recitation of all their names. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG ITS BEEN SO LONG! I'm trying to graduate from grad school at the moment, so I've been working on this chapter on and off for a while. I couldn't resist posting it though, what with all the new promo materials featuring the Bardlings. Are they adorable or are they adorable? 
> 
> Oh, and as a matter of interest Mrs. Bard is DEFINITELY alive in this story, she's just still in bed at the moment, we're going to meet her soon. I figure since it's never explicitly stated in DoS (according to Luke Evans) where she is, it's totally plausible that she's alive and just in another room for the whole movie.


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Very minor spoilers for DoS:** I would like to let everyone know before this chapter begins that Mrs. Bard is alive and well in this story. Because I feel like her death adds nothing for Bard in terms of his character or arc, it's a throwaway line and a sadface and...well, I don't much like it. So there.

When Thorin woke he was conscious of a weight upon his legs and warmth on either side of him. After weeks of aching cold and loneliness he wondered if this was not some dream, a rare pleasure granted in sleep. Then he was conscious of quiet bickering above him.

“Didn’t you play that one already?”

“Nah, your sight’s going, that’s a fair set.”

“You spend too much time around young Nori, you’ve picked up his bad habits, Balin’ll be refusing to sit down to cards with _you_ next - ah. He’s awake.”

Dís, sitting cross-legged on Thorin’s left, nudged him in the side with her knee. “Hold still a moment, I’m nearly out.”

Dwalin, mirroring her pose on Thorin’s right snorted, “Nearly. That’s awfully generous.”

Thorin’s brain was still fuzzy with sleep, but it did not take a genius to deduce that he’d rolled onto his stomach at one point during slumber and Dís and Dwalin decided to use his back as a table for playing cards.

Ignoring both their groans of dismay he rolled over, scattering the cards and the weight on his legs - two weights he realized, shifted and muttered as well.

“They wanted to keep watch,” Dís remarked wryly, smiling at her sons who lay across the end of the bed, effectively keeping their uncle in place while they slept in a tangle of limbs and blankets. They looked more like lapdogs than anything else.

“How long have I been out?” Thorin asked and his sister rolled her eyes.

“You’ve been _asleep_ for...eight hours? Nine? You could do with a few more if you ask me, but I thought you’d get hungry sooner or later.” She reached for a cloth-wrapped bundle and placed it in his lap. Bread, cheese and a smoked sausage; he’d survived on less.

“Where did you get the cards?” he asked when Dís told him to budge up so she could collect them all from where he’d scattered them upon rising.

“Bain,” she replied. “That’s Bard - the boatman’s - eldest boy. I’m not sure he was meant to have them, his mother gave him an earful about it, but we sneaked away.”

“Mother?” Thorin queried. He recalled the boatman clearly enough, and the three children, but he had no recollection of meeting a woman of Men in the short journey between the kitchen and the bed.

Dwalin nodded, “Aye, she was asleep when we came in - or she stayed in her room, at least. Good thing too, she’s nearly about to deliver another bairn. We might’ve shocked her so the wee one might’ve come before it’s time.”

“Well, we’ve got Óin,” Fíli mumbled, only half-awake. “There’s that.”

He shifted and in doing so managed to elbow his younger brother in the eye; Kíli retaliated by pulling the ends of Fíli’s mustache with clumsy hands. Fíli shoved him and for a moment they grappled with one another before they lost their balance, teetering on the edge of the bed, and fell to the floor with a crash.

Not half a moment later the door opened and a smiling little face poked through the gap between the door and the wall.

“Oh, good, you’re awake, Master Dwarf!” Tilda cried happily. “I’m so glad, you looked ill this morning, you look much better now. Have you eaten anything? It’s too early for supper, but I could find something for you if you’d like. Or run a bath. Everyone else has had one, but I could fetch some water, I’m very strong and - ”

“Tillie!” One of Bain’s skinny arms grabbed his sister by the the back of the sloppy tail tied with a bedraggled ribbon at the base of her neck. “Da said leave them in peace!”

“Da said leave them in peace whilst Mister Thorin was sleeping,” she corrected, shaking him off. “But Mister Thorin is awake now - aren’t you Mister Thorin?”

Despite himself, Thorin’s lips twitched into a reasonable facsimile of a smile. “I think so, lass,” he said and Tilda clapped her hands in delight.

“See, I’m not troubling them,” she informed her brother proudly, sticking her tongue out at him. “Anyway, Mister Thorin is looking ever so much better - better than Mister Baggins at any - ”

“Tillie!” an older woman’s voice, but not the sister’s, sounded then, equal parts chiding and weary. “If you keep running your tongue like that, it’ll be clear across town in half a minute and you won’t have a hope of catching it!”

Tilda clapped her hands over her mouth and made an apologetic bob toward the dwarves who were coming out of the bedroom. “Sorry,” she said, or something very like it; it was difficult to make the word out behind her hands, but it had the ring of an apology.

“No harm done,” Dís reassured both the girl and her mother. Sigrid the Elder looked very like Sigrid the Younger, though her face was a little rounder, more lined and her dark hair was shot through here and there with strands of grey, tucked into a haphazard knot on the top of her head. The state of her belly indicated that she was very near her time.

The woman was sitting by a small fire with her feet up, her shoulders wrapped in a blanket; Dori had taken a place on the floor and sat by with a faded shawl in his lap, knitting needles flying while Miss Sigrid knelt next to him staring at his quick hands as new lines of wool replaced the places where the garment was worn through.

“How do you manage it so quickly?” the girl asked wonderingly. “I can’t get through a scarf without pulling out rows and rows and starting over a dozen times. You don’t ever make a mistake!”

“I’ve had a century or more to perfect my craft,” Dori replied, patiently. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen, sir.”

“Fifteen!” Dori clucked his tongue and shook his head, the needles never faltered in their steady rhythm. “When I was fifteen I was hardly out of swaddling, so you’re leaps and bounds ahead of me, my dear.”

“Many blessings upon your house,” Thorin said to the children’s mother, bowing slightly.

The woman lay a hand atop her stomach and shook her head in amazement. “The courtesy of dwarves,” she said. “I don’t mind saying that you’ve been more courteous than the neighbors these past months - whatever my doubts may have been, you’re all very welcome to my house for as long as you have need of it.”

Thorin made another shallow bow, “Thank you, madam.”

Behind his back, Dís and Dwalin shared a conspiratorial grin between them. Though Thorin would balk at being compared to a child, both of them contended that, much like a dwarfling of twenty, he was infinitely pleasanter to deal with once he’d gotten some sleep and a decent meal in him.

Still shaking off the last bits of sleepiness that falling on the floor hadn’t knocked out of him, Kíli cocked his head at Bard’s wife in confusion. “Discourteous? About the baby? Who’d ever do a thing like that?”

Saving the woman from having to give answer, Dís ruffled her son’s hair and said, “More souls than you’d think - even amongst our own people, so hush and mind your manners. You could stand to learn a lesson from Miss Tilda.”

Tilda was standing with her hands over her mouth still, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, fit to burst with a thousand questions, but she stilled her tongue since her mother bade her do so.

“Oh, I don’t know, ma’am,” Bain piped up, looking at his mother as if asking permission to speak further. “Grandam always said when a baby’s born in this family, there’s a dwarf wants thanking.”

The dwarves gathered in the sitting room perked their heads up at such an odd pronouncement. Óin turned slowly and gave the boy an appraising look. “Say that again, laddie,” he requested slowly. “I’m a wee bit hard of hearing.”

Bain cleared his throat as his cheeks turned pink, clearly a little overwhelmed at the sudden rapt attention. His wide eyes settled on his mother, clearly asking for help and she smiled, shrugging at her eldest daughter.

“Just a tale,” she replied easily. “Passed down so many times I’ve forgotten who started it, my great-great grandmother or great-great-great...ah, but you always liked the story best, didn’t you, dear?”

“Ooh, ooh!” Tilda’s hands fell from her mouth and she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. “May I tell it, Ma? May I _please?”_

“Let your sister tell it,” her mother replied. “Give your voice a rest.”

Miss Sigrid wet her lips and looked around, but she had a little more poise than her younger brother and managed not to look too flustered.

“Er...well, it was many years ago. A - ” she bit her lip and smiled bashfully. “A dark and stormy night, it’s how all the good stories start, isn’t it? Well. It was a dark and stormy night and my...great-great-great...or great-great-great-great grandmother was laboring with my...er...with her eldest child. She’d been at it for ages and ages, but the birth wasn’t progressing as it should, the town midwife didn’t know what to do, so they summoned the dwarves of the mountain to see if they could work their ma - to see if they could help.”

“Our family was grander in years gone by,” the mother interrupted, turning her head slightly to gave at the wall, looking at something beyond the wooden eaves of their home. “Sovereigns in the great city of Dale. The birth of the first-born was always much anticipated.”

“Right,” young Sigrid nodded. “They thought no one would come, but a dwarf lady from inside the Mountain...she had blue eyes hair and a black beard all braided with silver, so the story goes. And the the whole household was amazed that she came, in all the wind and rain, but she said that a bit of bad weather wouldn’t stop her in her execution of her craft.”

Óin snorted approvingly, “As it shouldn’t. Go on, lassie, speak up, now. Clearly.”

Sigrid nodded a few times, shyly and proceeded more boldly, “The baby was turned the wrong way round, but she delivered her safely - it was a girl. But there wasn’t any rejoicing when she’d done it. They wanted a boy, you see. And some said, when the midwife announced that the lady of the house was delivered of a daughter, that for all that trouble, the babe ought to have been a boy.”

Glóin, listening from a nearby doorway interrupted to snort, “A babe’s a blessing, always, no two ways about it. I’ll never understand Men. Our hobbit’s asleep now, still feverish, Óin, if you want to look in on him.”

Óin might not have heard Glóin clearly, but he had the thoughtfulness to sign as he spoke. “Cool washcloth on the brow and neck,” he muttered to himself. “That’ll set him to rights - ”

“Let me,” Thorin said, holding a hand out for the roll of cloth Óin had been soaking to soothe Bilbo’s fever. The healer gave him a mildly skeptical look, but Thorin’s hand never wavered. “I owe him my life and our freedom. The least I can do is watch over him for a few hours.”

Óin handed the cloth and bowl over without a word of protest.

“Bifur and Bofur are in there now,” Glóin informed Thorin. “Though Bifur was on the verge of kicking Bofur out, the laddie wants quiet and you know that one’s anything but, I’ve had enough of it. I’d rather hear the end of the lassie’s tale. What’d the dwarrowdam say when she heard such talk as that?”

“Ooh, she was very angry,” Sigrid told him, resuming the story where she’d left off. “She said, just as you did, sir dwarf, that a babe’s a blessing and a firstborn girl-child is a double blessing. She said it portends great things for one’s house. No one dared say a word against her, so they stopped speaking against the child. The baby’s parents were so grateful they named their daughter for her - Sigrid - and so it’s been in my Ma’s family that if the firstborn is a daughter, she’s given that name.”

“It can be a bit confusing,” Sigrid the Elder chimed in with a gently mocking smile. “Especially when there’s three generations to account for in a town. My mother was an eldest child, I’m the eldest of my brothers and my darling raconteur is our eldest.”

“They say it was the dwarf’s magic that did it,” Tillie couldn’t help herself from saying.

“Not just that,” her sister corrected. “My mother’s people haven’t lost a single woman in childbed in as long as they can remember and they put it down to the dwarven lady’s aid - it, it is just a story.”

This last was added anxiously. Many of the Company eyed one another and exchanged significant glances among themselves. It took Dís a moment to work out just what the matter was before she remembered. Sigríd. Her great-grandmother, her father’s mother’s mother. No one spoke of her much for she had been many years dead before the oldest amongst them could walk.

All Dís knew was that she was a skilled healer who often followed the caravans to war and met her death in doing so. This story of life-bringing was new, she’d no idea that the lady had been a midwife - from the surprised look on Óin’s face, he hadn’t either. What a wonder that they would hear it from the lips of an adolescent Mannish girl in a freezing little backwater. And what a blessing to know that not all those who carried the legacy of the dwarves of Erebor in this land spouted stories of fire, death, and greed.

“A very - ” Balin recovered himself first, as usual, but he too seemed moved by the telling. “A very fine tale it is too.”

Sigrid smiled in obvious relief that it was not badly received and confided, “It’s one of my favorite stories. It made me want to be a midwife - when I was little, anyway.”

“What’s stopping you now?” Óin asked, folding his arms over his chest.

The girl looked taken aback by the inquiry. She fiddled with a loose string on her sleeve and cast her eyes to the floor. When she looked back up, she saw that he had not forgotten her and expected an answer. With a slightly uncertain glance at her mother, she said, “I’d like to be married and have children of my own.”

“Noble goal,” Óin nodded, fixing her with a searching look. “But it doesn’t answer my question.”

“Married ladies can’t be midwives,” Tilda burst out, feeling that since she was not pestering their guests by asking question, but being helpful and answering questions her sister hesitated in replying to.

Their mother was silent on the matter, but the look she gave her eldest daughter and namesake was neither stern nor disapproving. On the contrary, she looked rather sad.

“Some of the village boys - _some_ ,” she clarified for her guests, “have loud mouths and loud opinions. Think they’d like a woman’s undivided attention. When they’ve done a bit of growing, they’ll realize it’s foolish to expect a wife to spend all her days and nights in care of them - midwife or no.”

"I'm never getting married," Tilda announced to the world at large. "More trouble than it's worth. I'd rather be a hermit."

Goodwife Sigrid laughed and shook her head at her daughter. "If you're still whistling the same tune when you're your sister's age, we'll see about getting you a shack of your own on the edge of town."

"Thank you, Mama," Tillie grinned.

“Pardon me for saying so, miss,” Fíli sidled up to Miss Sigrid’s other side and settled in on the rug where she sat. “But I’m sure any lad who’s so puffed up on himself that he thinks _anyone_ ought to be so enamored of him isn’t worth your time. Can’t hardly be interesting if all he speaks of is himself!”

“‘Sides,” Kíli added, “If it’s children you’re wanting, well, your attention would be divided every which way then, eh, Mam?”

“For going on eighty-three years, aye,” Dís rolled her eyes and ruffled Kíli’s hair, loose and hanging as ever. Just like his uncle. Fortunately Fíli inherited his father’s sense and kept his hair braided and bound out of his face - though the presence of faded blue ribbons trailing into crooked plaits indicated that Miss Tilda might have given him some help while she had been playing cards with Dwalin. “If you want my advice, Miss Sigrid - which you likely don’t, but I’ll give it to you anyway - you set yourself on a lad who’ll think of you at least half as often as he thinks of himself.”

“I’ve heard much of the cunning of dwarves, the strength of dwarves, the - well, anyway, I’ve never heard much said of the _wisdom_ of dwarves.”

Bard was coming in from outside. There was ice on his boots and snowflakes in his hair. When he latched the door, he secured two bolts against the outside world.

His wife smiled, “You’re quick to call ‘wisdom’ that which agrees so cheerfully with your own thoughts.”

Bard went to her at once and kissed her briefly. “It’s only fair, as I’m very wise. How are you?”

“Very well,” she replied, gesturing to their houseguests. “We’ve been telling tales of years ago. When the Mountain was still home to their kind.”

“That was _many_ years ago,” Bard agreed, but his tone lost some of his lightness and his eyes grew sharp as he stared at the foreign faces in his kitchen and sitting room. “There’s talk of a storm on the horizon, early for autumn, but last winter was an easy one for us, it seems we’re getting the brunt of it now.”

“A storm?” Dwalin asked, stepping out from behind Bard and startling him slightly. Dís wondered how the Man could have missed him, Dwalin’s steps were as firm and heavy as slabs of marble, but their impromptu host did have a distracted way about him. “How long will it last?”

“Impossible to say,” Bard shrugged. “I’d wager no more than a day or two, give it a week before the roads are clear.”

Dwalin growled and stomped off toward the bedroom where Bilbo lay, but Dís put a restraining hand upon his chest and said, “I’ll tell him.” Dwalin and Thorin could either bring out the greatest joy in one another or the worst pessimism and she had a feeling that this announcement would be cause for the latter.

“Can your journey be delayed a few days?” she heard Bard asking as she hurried to her brother’s side. “Where are you going?”

“We had hoped to reach our destination...soon,” Balin said carefully as she shut the door behind herself. Despite the Woman’s kind words, she had little doubt that she and her husband would soon tire of playing host to fourteen dwarves and an invalid halfling. She was equally sure that Balin would smooth over the entire thing for the moment so she willed her worries away that they might not fill up her head and crowd out the rest of her thoughts.

Bofur was coming out just as she was coming in. “Given my marching orders,” he whispered into her ear. “Quiet whilst napping’s afoot. Or abed. Or achair.”

Dís had to clap her hand over her own mouth to stifle a giggle. Bifur sat in one chair by Bilbo’s bedside, carving a small piece of what was once firewood and Thorin was slumped on the other side, head tucked down on his chest, snoring faintly as he dozed.

“What about him?” she whispered back, nodding toward Thorin.

Bofur shrugged and replied easily, “King’s privilege! I’m off to see if Bombur’s begun supper yet, could be he needs a hand.”

Dís really was loathe to wake him, but Thorin needed to be told and he would probably wake up with a sore neck if he slept like that for the rest of the night. Years of experience let her know just how unpleasant her life could quickly become if she shook Thorin awake with no warning and coming at him like a boulder down a hillside so soon after their imprisonment would no doubt do more harm than good.

She bent down by his side and whispered in his ear, “Thorin! There’s ham on.”

Even Bifur, who had likely given the order for quiet in the first place, chuckled when Thorin roused himself with a start, nearly knocking his head against his sister’s. “What?”

“Nothing,” Dís replied. “Not nothing - I’ve got some bad news.”

With a low groan, Thorin rubbed his eyes with the fingers of his left hand and made a little ‘go on’ gesture with his right.

“Bard says there’s a storm coming,” she said. “Might delay us a few days.”

Thorin held his pose for a moment, considering. It was a little over a week to Durin’s Day. They had no time to delay, but the weather could not be stopped by Dwalin’s shouting, Balin’s cajoling or any of their taking up arms.

“So we wait,” Thorin said at last. “Again, we wait.”

 _We wait, snow or no,_ Bifur signed. _Here, we wait warm and fed._

 _How long?_ Thorin signed back. Using his hands to speak made him drop his despairing posture and Dís found herself grateful for the relief of seeing him brought low again.

“As long as we must,” she whispered, mindful of Bilbo sleeping on the bed. He was pale, but not deathly so. His cheeks were ruddy with fever, but he did not writhe beneath his thin blanket and his brow, laid with a cool cloth, was not dripping sweat. “Do you want to stay here and sleep or help with supper?”

Thorin said that he would help and Dís extended a hand to pull him out of the chair. The two of the left the room together to join their fellows who had put all the little Bardlings to work peeling potatoes while their mother looked at them all with a pleased smile on her face. The father looked less happy, his gaze lingered on Thorin in particular for an uncomfortably long moment.

Dís caught his eye before her brother did. Bard only smiled compulsively, a nervous twitch of his mouth before he turned his attention back to warming himself by the fire. She nearly said something, but Bombur placed a bowl of beets in her hands and asked her if she wouldn’t mind scrubbing them, so she thought better of it. They were guests here, after all, and it wouldn’t do to provoke their host - even if she hadn’t much liked the look on his face.


	41. Chapter 41

Sigrid found her husband rooting through an old chest in their bedroom. Their guests insisted on preparing supper and she gratefully permitted them total control over her kitchen and pantry; having sampled their fare at luncheon she was happy to let them have at it as long as they would.

Bard must have sensed her behind him, for he swung round as she made her way over the threshold. His hair was loose and falling around his face, greyer now than in years past, but so was she. Sigrid thought he looked handsomer for it, he said she only became more beautiful as time went on and he was so sweet about it, she could almost believe him.

“Are you tired?” he asked, rising and making his way to her, one hand at the small of her back, the other hovering anxiously over her stomach.

“A bit,” she admitted, letting her husband walk her over to the bed. It was difficult to find a place to sit, the entire thing was laid over with tapestries and silks that looked positively ancient, yellowed with age, some eaten away by moths, others burned. Too damaged to sell, but they had been rescued from Dale and were too important to throw away. No generation of her husband’s family had parted from them in over a hundred years and Sigrid could not believe Bard would be the one to toss them on the rubbish pile.

“No wonder,” he said idly, clearing the place on her side of the bed so she could put her feet up. “It’s been...a strange day. You’ve borne it well, darling.”

Sigrid smiled at him with only a touch of irony. “I can’t say I was pleased when you brought half score dwarves into my sitting room in the wee hours, but if they continue to cook and clean as well as they have, I’m happy to host them indefinitely. Or at least until the storm passes.”

Bard did not return her smile. On the contrary, his brow furrowed and he looked so solemn, his wife was taken aback.

“What is it?” she asked, fingering the dusty fabric. “Spring cleaning? It’s far too early.”

Bard only shook his head, unfurling one tapestry, then another, frowning all the while.

“Its been troubling me all afternoon,” he muttered, tossing the moth-eaten cloth on the floor. “I don’t...I don’t trust them. They’re hiding something. We haven’t got the full measure of them, not even half I’d reckon.”

His wife’s reply was patient. “They’re _Dwarves_ , dear. They’re all secrets, aren’t they? I don’t think we have anything to fear from them, if they’d wanted to murder us, they’ve had more than enough opportunity, I can hardly run, can I? Even without those swords of theirs - neatly piled by the door - I don’t think we’d stand much of a chance against them.”

“Thorin,” Bard said out of nowhere.

Sigrid raised an eyebrow, “Seems very polite. Quiet, but polite. Tillie said he was unwell when he arrived.”

“It’s not his manners or his health that troubles me,” he replied, looking up from his search to lock eyes with his wife. “It’s his name. I’ve heard it before, I’m sure I have I - ”

Bard fell silent as he unfolded one of the last tapestries, easily the best-preserved. The fabric was a deep, rich blue, the woading unfaded by time or accident. Some of the corners were black with ash, though it was obviously a family tree, or at least a genealogy. Grave bearded faces stared up at them, joined by thick lines, shimmering with golden thread. Bard smoothed his hands, fingertips grazing the images woven into the cloth.

Dáin, King Under the Mountain, father of Thrór, Frór and Grór. It was clear that Frór died young for a dwarf, but his brothers went on to have children. Grór had a son called Náin. Thrór had a son called Thráin. And Thráin had three children. Thorin. Frerin. Sigdís.

Both husband and wife saw the name, the face that looked like so many others, laid out in stark lines before them. Bard let out a breath and Sigrid drew one in, shaking her head.

“No,” she said. “No, it can’t be them, it can’t be! The Dwarves of Erebor perished over a century ago! Thorin would have to be nearly two-hundred years old!”

“But you heard them!” Bard said, a feverish light in his eyes. “You heard them, did you not? The silver-haired one, speaking to Sigrid, he said he’d been working for more than a century! If they are the same dwarves who fled the mountain all those years ago, there can be only one reason they have returned!”

Despite the disbelief etched across her face, beating around in her mind like wings, Sigrid remembered the words of a poem, little more than a nursery rhyme, taught to children when they first asked about the big hill that stood watch over the town.

 _The lord of silver fountains._  
The king of carven stone.  
The King Beneath the Mountain  
Shall come into his own.

 _And the bell shall ring in gladness_  
At the Mountain King’s return  
But all shall fail in sadness  
And the Lake will shine and burn.

Bard’s thoughts were running along the same course. He swallowed visibly and said, “Some have called it a prophecy.”

Halls full of treasure. Gems as big as your fist, mechanical marvels, glories the like of which one could never dream in every nook and cranny. All lying in wait to be reclaimed, but for the dragon who claimed mastery over all of it. Sigrid remembered her father saying that when he was a boy, smoke would rise from the rock, a sure sign that the beast was within. But she had seen no such sign herself; the Lonely Mountain looked entirely desolate.

“Da!” Bain burst in without knocking, his cheeks pink. “There are guards outside the doors! I don’t know what to - ”

The sound of hammering against the door was audible even from the bedroom, Bard bade both his wife and son to remain where they were, only Sigrid obeyed. By the time he got downstairs, the Master’s guards were in the kitchen, their weapons drawn and his daughters were screaming. Dís put herself between the guards and Tilda while her eldest son stood in front of Sigrid with a knife in his hand, drawn apparently from nowhere.

“Bard!” from behind the hulking, armored figures of the city watch, a smaller fellow appeared, his dark eyes darting and his smile wicked. “You are under arrest for smuggling and harboring suspicious persons without the consent of the Master.”

“Only goods can be smuggled, Alfrid,” Bard replied angrily. “Not people.”

“Ah, but these aren’t people, are they?” Alfrid smirked nastily, drawing his tongue over his blackened teeth. “They’re _Dwarves_. Mercenaries, no doubt. The Master’s had his eye on you, we’ve suspected you of sedition for quite a while. Always cheeky, weren’t you, Bard? Unwilling to bend your neck, pay respect, but at least we thought you were honest enough to do your own dirty work.”

Nodding at the guard nearest him, he gestured toward Bard, “Take him away.”

“Da!” his eldest daughter cried. Tilda tried to wriggle her way past Dís, but the dwarrowdam’s arm was more like an iron rod than it was flesh and no easier to bend. Bard instinctively struggled against his bonds, but Alfrid shook his head and tsked loudly.

“Now, now, come quiet and we’ll see that no harm comes to your family. It would be a pity to seize your property and all. Turn the little ones out in the cold - and your lovely wife. Poor timing, what with the baby on the way. It’d be a shame if anything was to _happen_ to them.”

Bard’s face went pale and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Thorin make some gesture. His heart clenched - was it a motion to attack? Despite the legendary skill of Dwarves in battle, they were largely unarmed against trained thugs - and they stood _so close_ to his daughters. But rather than turn their fists or blades on the city watch, all of them stood at ease, meagre weapons clattering to the floor.

“Take them too,” Alfrid added, carelessly. “The Master’ll be wanting a good, long look, no doubt.”

The city watch attracted quite a crowd. Gossiping behind hands and shawls, closing the ears and eyes of children as they strained to see and hear, jostling one another as they made the long, journey from Bard’s home by the docks to the foot of a crumbling mansion.

It must have been grand when it was built, but the grandeur had long passed. The Man who stood upon the flaking stone steps seemed to embody the structure, the very picture of vanity gone to seed. Where once breadth of chest and shoulder filled his coat, the heft had transferred to his belly. His lace sleeves were grimy and yellowed, his teeth black and chipped and hair that had once been a lustrous red-yellow, but hung in stringy clumps around his face. His blotchy face was drawn down in disapproval, but his beady blue eyes gleamed with a satisfaction that he seemed to be trying his damnedest to conceal.

Alfrid spoke the evidence aloud, for all the assembled townsfolk to hear, "According to the customshouse, you were charged with the delivery of fifteen empty barrels to be brought ashore from the Elvenking's Realm. You did not report your cargo at the appointed station, in fact, there was no reciept of any such deliver recorded. Witnesses  _did_ report seeing you hurrying through the roadways with a band of dwarves charging along at your heels. In great haste, taking great care not to be seen. What have you got to say for yourself?"

"Nothing," Bard said shortly. "Since you seem to have pronounced judgment already.

“Well,” the Master chose that moment to assert himself, coming down the stairs, but stopping well before he came within arm’s reach of Bard. “Well, well, well. So, it’s come to this, at last. I admit, I have suspected that you have long held bitter opposition to the lawful governance of this village, but I never thought it would come to this, Bard. Treason. _Insurrection._ And dwarvish mercenaries! It is quite a plot you have hatched to make yourself a ruler. Did you ever think I would not find you out?”

The look upon Bard’s face was murderous, but his hands and voice were steady when he spoke, “I no more want to rule this place than a pig would seek to rule its own sty.”

A murmur went through the crowd accompanied by what sounded like chortles of laughter turning into hacking coughs. The dwarves of the Company stood in the innermost circle of the ring, guards nearby armed with spears. None of them had been clapped in irons and Dís estimated, without boastfulness, that even unarmed they could easily overpower these Men and flee, but she understood why Thorin bade them lay their weapons down and come quietly. The risk of injuring innocents was high and even if they did cut a bloody path through town, where would they go without arms enough for all of them and nothing to their names save the shirts on their backs?

Distantly, she was grateful that Bilbo had not been rounded up with the rest of them, confined as he was to his sickbed.

She kept her eyes fixed upon the Master, whose jowls quivered with anger as he drew himself up, enraged. “Such arrogance! You may be the descendent of great men, but you hold no sway here, bargeman!”

The Master adopted an almost coquettish trill to his voice that reminded Dís gratingly of the Goblin King. “Oh, mercy me!” he brought a fluttering hand to his heart and made a parody of a respectful bow. “Or should I address you as the Lord of Dale?”

None of the Men seemed surprised by the Master’s words, but the dwarves of the Company stiffened and some turned to look incredulously at Bard, trying to find something of Girion in him. He was tall and lean, but years of deprivation would do that to a body. Girion had been broad and bearded, but he had fallen in the drake’s initial attack. It was rumored that his wife escaped the blaze, but it was not known what had become of his wife. Or his children.

But there was something about the coal-dark curls that sparked a memory in the oldest of the Company. The expression on the face was grim, but something about their boatman’s brow and eyes seemed familiar, now that they knew to look.

“But Dale is in ruins,” the Master went on, in his normal tone again. “And with it goes your claim! How deep does the treachery run, Bard? To your children? Your wife? Not a love-match, then, but a bond to strengthen ancient alliances? Should I lock you all away? You and your filthy band of assassins?”

“Enough!” Thorin spoke with such gravity and authority that the Master fell silent. “We are not sellswords, nor hired murderers. This Man has committed no crime, upon my honor he hasn’t.”

The Master collected himself and sneered down at Thorin from his great height. “Honor?” he laughed, a wheezy thing. “Honor! In all my days, I never thought I’d hear a dwarf speak of honor! What honor would that be, the honor of your tin-peddler’s cart or the honor of your cutpurses’s knife?”

“Hold your tongue!” Dís snarled at the same time as Dwalin bellowed, “You know not to whom you speak.”

Dwalin shook off the hand of the watchman restraining him as if it was a cotton thread.

“This,” he growled, “is Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór.”

“The King Under the Mountain,” Bard said, quietly, to himself, but silence reigned after Dwalin’s outburst, punctured only by whispered repetitions of the words, ‘King Under the Mountain,’ ‘halls filled with treasure,’ and ‘the prophecy, the prophecy!’

Even the Master gave pause. Thorin steeled himself, a squaring of his shoulders and an intake of breath invisible to all save those who knew him best. Then he spoke taking in the whole of the Company with one sweep of his broad right hand, “We are the Dwarves of Erebor. We have come to reclaim our homeland.”

The Master stood stock-still upon his own doorstep. He looked at Thorin and his calculating gaze fell upon each of the Company in turn. Dís could see the cogs in his mind turning and she wondered what his judgment would be. She expected an order to seize them, to slit their throats, and dump their bodies into the frozen water. They would fight then, she knew, bone and sinew standing in the place of iron and steel. She thought she would aim for the watchman who stood nearest her, with black eyes and breath stinking of drink. He’d raised his spear at little Tilda and she rather thought she’d like to see him bleed for it.

His gaze traveled beyond the Company, to the Men crowded behind them, still murmuring excitedly. He looked back at Thorin again and smiled, his tongue smoothing over his chipped teeth.

“Welcome!” he cried, at once all warm hospitality. “Welcome to Esgaroth!”

The crowd gave a cheer, but none of the dwarves relaxed a muscle, they all looked at one another, mystified. They could have little love for the Master after his appalling treatment of their host and his family and no dwarf would ever trust one whose words and tone and smiles were so changeable.

Even Alfrid looked uncertain. “Sir?” he said, stepping out from his place beside a watchman to approach his master. “Might we have a quick word?”

“Later, later,” the Master waved him off and approached Thorin, rubbing his hands together briskly in the manner of one who was either very cold, or attempting to make a business deal. “Well. Well, well, that is _quite_ a different matter! Shame on you, Bard, for keeping such a noble personage under lock and key. Old habits die hard, no doubt of it, Sir Dwarf, but it is _I_ to whom you ought to have applied yourself.”

“Master Bard proved himself a generous host,” Thorin replied, folding his arms across his chest. Dís noticed that the Master had not bowed or otherwise offered his hand; though he spoke words of welcome, his actions said otherwise and dwarves would always trust deeds before words. “We have a companion with us who is unwell, he was provided with a bed and comfort by this Man and his family.”

“Cold comfort, I am sure, with the wind coming in through every crevice,” the Master chuckled, then stopped when he saw that Thorin was not laughing. “Of course he must come here, the snow falls harder every minute! You all must come here and - supper! Alfrid, put five - no, _ten_ more pheasants on the spit!”

Alfrid trudged up the stairs to obey, then twisted his head around to look at the dwarves warily. “Sir…”

“Go on, Alfrid!” the Master waved him along impatiently. “There’s a good fellow - ah. And, Erik, if you would be so kind, unfetter our bargeman. I could not have imagined...such a misunderstanding, but then, you see what it _looked_ like, don’t you, Bard?”

“Oh, I do,” he scowled, massaging some life back into his fingertips.

“But let it never be said that I am not a reasonable man,” the Master smiled, twirling one end of his limp mustache between his fingers. “Come, come! In the hall, please, I insist, most noble guests. Amongst the people, your return has long been anticipated.”

“Has it?” Balin asked, eyes narrowing shrewdly. “What gratifying news. Pray, how _could_ you have known?”

The Master seemed even more taken in by Balin’s affectation of harmless sincerity than Bard had been. He stooped low and shouted as if Balin was quite deaf; Óin lowered his ear trumpet and glowered at him.

“Why the rime of course!” the Master boasted. “Of the return of the dwarf kings of old! ‘The woods shall wave on mountains / And grass beneath the sun; / His wealth shall flow in fountains / And the rivers golden run.’”

There was no missing the gleam in the Master’s eyes when he spoke the word ‘wealth.’ The little verse had no meaning to the dwarves, but the Men whispered again to one another about the King of Silver Fountains, of Carven Stone, of great joy at the return of the throne of Erebor. Dís could well understand their excitement, having seen how bare Bard’s larder was, even before he was set upon by fourteen dwarves; if that was how the descendant of kings lived, she wondered at the state of those who truly were less fortunate.

“A pretty verse,” Balin acknowledged. He did not take a step away from the Master, though his skin must have been crawling from such unwanted proximity. Thorin shifted closer to his cousin and Dwalin came right up behind him, hands balling into fists that were menacing, even without his knuckledusters. “And what a boon, to find such a...favorable reception.”

“Of course!” the Master clapped Balin hard on the shoulder, then made a small wince of pain. The white-haired dwarf did not budge. “Just a little...a little misunderstanding, as I said. One can never be too careful! Ah. Erm. About that friend of yours - ”

“We’ll retrieve him,” Thorin said in a tone that would brook no argument. “And pay our respects to Master Bard and his worthy family.”

The Master said that of course they might do so and sent them along with two of the city watch - an ‘honor guard’ he called them, but none of the Company was foolish enough to find any honor in the gesture, only more suspicion.

The children, at least, were sad to see the back of them.

 _“Must_ you go?” Tillie lamented, taking Dís’s arm quite boldly to stop her on the threshold of Bilbo’s room. “You’ve all been such fun! And such good cooks!”

Dís smiled at patted the girl’s hand, gently easing her arm out of the child’s grip. “We must,” she nodded, glancing at her brother and Bard, deep in counsel. “But I won’t soon forget you, Miss Tilda. Nor your fine sister and brother.”

“We have overstayed our welcome, I fear,” Thorin spoke quietly to Bard across the room as the Man’s youngest daughter hugged his sister, rather unexpectedly. “I did not mean to bring such trouble upon your house.”

“The trouble you mean to cause worries me far more than anything that transpired tonight,” Bard replied gravely. “Do you truly mean to enter that mountain? Do you know what danger lies within?”

A muscle twitched in Thorin’s jaw and he nodded once, “I do.”

“You cannot,” Bard said. “Have a care! _Think!_ You have not seen the devastation left in that creature’s wake, the ruin of Dale - ”

“Do _not_ ,” Thorin gritted out, “tell me what I know. What I have seen. _You_ have no idea...you don’t know of what you speak. I mean to thank you for your hospitality and your family’s kindness. When the Mountain is reclaimed, you will have all that is your due.”

“Do not make such promises as that,” Bard shook his head. “I would rather my family live in poverty than die in flames for the sake of dwarven gold.”

“You do not know that it will come to that,” Thorin said, holding Bard’s gaze steadily. The Man was the first to look away.

“Nor do you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little short, but consider this part one of two. This seemed like a natural stopping point, but I do want to get them into the Master's house without going through the usual update cycle, so with a little luck *touch wood* I'll have the next chapter up in a day or two.


	42. Chapter 42

The Master’s home was warmer than Bard’s had been, by virtue of the huge hearths that dominated nearly every room, but no finer. The tapestries sagged upon the walls, the rugs were worn down to the stone in the great hall and the paintings were grimy with age. The entire assemblage seemed to have been gathered by one who had an eye for the finer things, but no idea how to care for them; even the silverware was tarnished.

Bilbo was feeling well enough to join them at supper, hot pheasants and cold beef, smothered in mustard sauce. The pheasants did well enough, but Óin warned Bilbo away from the meat which had been past its prime when it was sent to the fires. A dwarven stomach could manage it, but he thought their halfling had gone through enough unpleasantness and did not want to add food poisoning on top of it.

The Master had every plate sampled before he tucked in. Either he was the most paranoid fellow any of the Company had the displeasure of meeting or there were more in Lake-town than Bard who were less than fond of their ‘lawful governance.’

Their new host talked a great deal and listened not at all. The beer was sour and the table linens soiled - Dís saw Dori’s mouth grow positively pinched at the sight, though tellingly he did not offer to launder the cloth, nor repair the holes made by carelessly thrown matches. At least, that was what Dís assumed the little burned spots came from, a suspicion confirmed when the Master lit his pipe following the meal and call for brandy. He flicked the match away and the still-hot stick rolled along the table, quietly smouldering.

“Such a treat,” he said, blowing smoke up toward the dirty ceiling. “Dwarves! After all this time. Conjurers, eh? Makers of magic tricks.”

“Smiths and merchants, mostly,” Balin replied in a strained tone of voice. Miners and toymakers and tinkers and warriors and scholars and thieves. But the Master did not need to know that. The skill of the dwarves may have held his interest, but their wealth was the only reason they now sat at his table. Their purported wealth. Their stolen wealth.

The Mountain was invisible now, its peak obscured by clouds and snowfall and the warped glass of the dining room windows, but Dís could almost feel it calling to her, a whisper in the back of her skull, an enticement to rise to her feet and walk. _Come home, come home._

Some Dwarves had stone-sense, stronger than others. Canny miners could find faults well before a cave-in or knew where the most valuable gems were clustered, or else settled in what would become the most spectacular caverns, miles and miles beneath the earth. Dís was more accustomed to the sweet song of metal-on-metal, the smooth slide of a blade or the enveloping warmth of forge-flame. Yet even she felt the pull, however faintly, of their ancient homeland.

She looked down the long table at Thorin, frowning and scowling as usual, but his eyes were far away and fixed on nothing. She wondered if he could hear the Mountain singing.

“Music!” the Master slapped his hand upon the tabletop. “I think so, in exchange for a hearty meal, I believe I am owed some music! Do you have any dwarf songs for me?”

“Oh, you can’t be serious,” Nori muttered beside her. Dís almost smiled; when Nori found a body annoying, it was a sure sign the rest of the room was contemplating murder.

Bilbo coughed, loudly, a hacking thing that had Fíli thumping his back, even as the halfling choked out, “Leave it! Leave it!” and flapped his hands wildly.

“Or - I’m sorry, what do you call yourself? Rabbit-songs?”

“Hobbit,” Bofur replied curtly. His hat was drawn low down to his eyebrows and he was rapping a tattoo against the table leg. “He’s a Hobbit and in no fit state for singing.”

Bilbo stifled a sneeze in his elbow and replied, “I’m rarely in a fit state for singing, in any case.”

The Master protested that he would _love_ to hear some songs, always went in for a tune after dinner, but minstrels were so _expensive_ to keep on hand and, in any case, their instruments were not of the highest calibre - nor were their voices, come to that - but as he was saying -

“It seems you’ve had the pleasure of dwarven music before,” Thorin interrupted, nodding toward a curio cabinet, seven shelves high, on the Master’s right. “Or am I mistaken?”

He was not mistaken, of course he was not mistaken and the others fairly gaped when they saw what caught their King’s eye and wondered how they could have missed it. It was a dwarven harp, crafted of wood, but laid in with goldwork at down its body. It was a small piece meant to be held in the lap and against the shoulder and Thorin was eyeing it with a mix of curiosity and suspicion.

“Oh, you’ve noticed my little curiosities, have you?” the Master sounded delighted and bade Alfrid bring the thing over that his guests might look upon it. “Been in the family for years, though I don’t think the poor thing’s been so much as plucked in fifty years. Not sized for Men, that’s for certain, I don’t think anyone’s been able to play it, the hands are all wrong.”

It was true that the long, spindly fingers of Men and Elves would be hard-pressed to coax song from dwarrow instruments or craft beauty from their tools. Thorin, Dís knew, could do both and she stared as the harp was placed before him for examining.

He looked at it for a long moment, plucking the strings, tightening some, loosening others. “Probably for the best that it hasn’t been played,” he remarked. “It’s intact.”

“Yes, well,” the Master puffed himself up proudly. “One would not wish to manhandle the spoils - ah. The treasures of Dale.”

 _Grave robbers,_ Dís thought suddenly, a chill like ice coursing down her spine, making her shiver. She saw it clear as day in her mind’s eye, scavengers picking through the wreckage after the last of the hot ash cooled. What were they _doing_ here, in this awful house, with this awful creature whose ancestors crept into the tomb that was Dale, taking what they could find to sell or hoard, not knowing its value?

Then she remembered the warriors of Azanulbizar, gathering the weapons and mail of the fallen because they had need of it, because they could not bury the bodies and she thought perhaps she should not judge so harshly or so quickly. The survivors obviously settled in Lake-town. Whatever the townsfolk had done, they at least had the decency to give shelter to the homeless Men. Her own people could not count on that much help from their neighbors.

“Do you play?” the Master asked Thorin, a ridiculous question since his adjustment to the strings and levers was slowly but surely bringing the poor neglected harp back to life.

Thorin’s hands stilled, “I did once.”

There hadn’t been money for a harp. And when there was, Thorin always insisted that it be spent on someone other than himself, a needy family, his nephews, Dís herself or another one of their kinsman or friends. _There is need here, real need,_ he always said whenever Dís suggested they pop down to the luthier’s and buy one. _But I don’t need a new harp._

Víli taught him to play the gittern, a skill Thorn was in the process of passing on to Fíli before they sold everything they could sell and went on this journey. The gittern was preserved, given to Thyra for safekeeping before they left. Neither Thorin nor Dís had been willing to part with it. It had been months since Thorin set his fingers to strings and years since he had played upon a harp. So it was to Dís’s simultaneous joy and astonishment that he set the thing in his lap and plucked out a simple tune.

It was one of the first ditties taught to dwarflings, one of the first he had learned. Thorin rendered the piece on the gittern a few times over the years, but the tune was familiar to all of them who had grown up in Erebor.

It was Dori, who first sang the accompanying words, the others joining in after him. Softly. Mournfully.

“The minstrel boy to the war is gone  
In the ranks of death you will find him.  
His father’s sword he has girded on  
And his wild harp slung behind him.

‘Land of Songs!’ said the warrior-bard,  
‘Though all the world betrays thee.  
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard  
One faithful heart shall praise thee.’”

Pride. Betrayal. Death. The legacy, so the bards would have it, of the Dwarves.

When the last notes faded, the Master looked shaken and Alfrid looked horrified. It might have been the remnants of the fever, but Dís thought Bilbo’s eyes looked overbright and teary. She looked away and scrubbed a hand over her own face. On her other side, Kíli gave her knee a gentle pat. She pulled him to her and kissed his hair.

“Er,” the Master cleared his throat, still unsettled. “A little - ah - gloomier, perhaps, than what I...well, nevermind. Oh! Is that the time?”

No clock sounded the hour, but the Man rose from his place at the table and strode hastily to the doors. “Your rooms have been aired for you, if you find you need anything, anything at all, just ring for the servants. Hopefully the storm is not so terrible as they think, a matter of two days’ delay before you’re back on your path and good luck and good journey and remember your friends of Lake-town fondly, I’m sure you will. Good night!”

The Master left, with Alfrid at his heels and his armed guard right behind him, eager to get away from the solemnity and sorrow, to heavy for Men such as that to bear.

Bilbo wiped at his eyes and said, “That was very beautiful. Very sad, but very beautiful.”

“It was written long ago,” Thorin said roughly, laying the harp back on the table and pushing it away from him. “When the Dwarves of Moria were driven from their homeland by Durin’s Bane and fought their way across the land to seek safe-haven in the East, their motherland already desecrated and befouled.”

A shudder went around the table, even Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur, Broadbeams all, could appreciate the tragedy of the invasion of Mount Gundabad. The violation. The thought of it turned Dís’s stomach.

“Uncle,” Fíli ventured tentatively, brushing his fingers against the smooth, polished wood of the harp. “That...that wasn’t your - ”

“What?” Thorin asked sharply. “No, of course not, don’t be a fool. There were shops that sold instruments from all over in Dale. This is...perfect. Stored in a cellar, wrapped in wool. Until bandits came to claim it.”

“Bandits?” Ori asked, breathlessly. “How do you know?”

“S’obvious, isn’t it?” Nori said, swallowing down the last of his brandy. “Burnt out hull of a place, but there was probably a lot worth finding among the rubble. If you were willing to get your hands dirty.” Rolling his shoulders uncomfortably he added, “Picking bits and bobs off corpses, though...ghoulish business.”

“Then we are all ghouls,” Thorin snarled at him, rising from his place in a terrible temper. “And desecrators of the dead.”

He stormed out, turning down one corridor, then another, with no aim in mind except to get away from the prating of children or the conspiratorial whispers of Men. No friend anywhere. Not a soul to be trusted.

“Thorin!”

Dís. But of course. He would lay his life in his sister’s hands and trust her to do her best by him until the end of all days.

“Where are you going?” she asked, closing the small space between them. She looked exhausted and he realized with a jolt that all those hours he had slept at Bard’s, she had been awake. Dís’s skin had a pallor he didn’t like and lines of worry, too much like his own, creased her brow.

“Namad,” he said and her mouth twitched into an uncomfortable little smile.

“That’s right,” she replied, reaching out and plucking his sleeve with her fingers, worrying the fabric. “I thought you were leaving us.”

Dís had a terrible fear of being abandoned, not unfounded. Beneath the gentle mockery of her voice, he could almost taste the anxiety, sharp, on the back of his tongue. Like blood.

“No, of course not,” he shook his head. Casting his eyes around he murmured, “I don’t like this place. I don’t like our _host.”_

“To be fair, I don’t think he likes us either,” Dís replied. “So it’s all one. Come back?”

Thorin knew his sister was grown, a master of her trade, a mother of (barely) of-age sons, but sometimes when he looked upon her he saw a bonny dwarfling with sparkling blue eyes, begging for a treat, a game, comfort and the reassurance that everything was going to be alright. A reassurance that he had not been able to give in over one-hundred years, but still she looked to him. They all looked to him.

“I’m tired,” Thorin said, not quite meeting her pleading eyes. “I think I’ll sleep.”

“Alone?” she asked. When her brother did not answer, Dís’s voice turned light, with obvious effort. “You might not be allowed that, I think Fíli and Kíli concluded that you were the best of pillows this afternoon.”

Thorin almost smiled, but his face turned grave when he recalled his admonishment to Fíli mere minutes before. “I don’t know that Fíli thinks much of me right now.”

“Nonsense,” Dís tutted. “He thinks the world of you and he always has and always will, no matter how many times you snap at him. The same goes for all of us, really, though I’ll own Dori doesn’t always bear it as gracefully as the rest of us.”

On the second try, Thorin managed a small smile, “Good old Dori.”

“Good old Dori,” Dís nodded. “Go on to sleep, then. I’ll send the boys along - if the blankets are in the same shape as the carpets, you’ll be glad of the company.”

Dís did not find her way to a bedroom until she was satisfied that her sons and her brother were sound asleep. The Master had enough rooms for all of their number to sleep singly, though none chose to, bunking has they had, family with family. That night, it was Balin who promised to stay with Bilbo, seeing to their burglar’s comfort, though their hobbit assured them that he was very much on the mend and would be right as rain come morning.

“Don’t see what’s right or wrong about rain,” Dwalin commented as he and Dís walked the dark corridors, faintly damp-feeling with the smell of must and mildew in the air. “But I take it to mean he’s on the mend.”

“Hardy little fellow,” Dís nodded, pausing outside the door to the chamber beside Thorin’s room. They both hesitated a long moment and then she reached forward, wrapping her hand loosely around Dwalin’s wrist. “Stay. With me, just...for a little while. Please?”

“Of course, lass,” Dwalin nodded, taking her chin in one of his great big hands and kissing her forehead. “Long as you like.”

Despite the Master’s assurances that the rooms had been aired, they still felt cold to Dís. She shucked off her boots and removed her tunic, but lay flush against Dwalin’s side in her trousers and underthings. He had removed his shirt and, evidently, his smallclothes, for his broad chest was bare but for hair and he fairly radiated heat.

“The nerve of him,” he grumbled, the words a deep purr under Dís’s ear.

“Hmm?” she asked, squinting up at him in the darkness. “The Master?”

“Aye,” Dwalin nodded, putting an arm around her shoulder to draw her close against him, idly stroking her side with his thumb. “Asking for dwarf-songs, as if we’re beggars who’ll play for a penny. Thorin had the right of it, I hope he felt sore ashamed.”

“I don’t know as one such as that _feels_ shame,” Dís whispered, one eye on the locked door, not that she thought locking it would make a difference. Eyes and ears everywhere and the walls were made of plaster, wood and brick. “Like Nori at his worst.”

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Dwalin sighed. “But young Nori’s got more honor in his little finger than that Man’s got in his whole figure.”

“And that’s a huge lack to make up for,” Dís smiled, snuggling closer to Dwalin beneath the dusty blanket. “I thought Thorin would refuse for certain. I can’t imagine what made him play - I’m glad he did. If he spooked the Master, that’s all well and good, but it heartened me to hear it.”

“Aye,” Dwalin chuckled. “Well, that’s a wee ounce of diplomacy that didn’t come from Balin. If I recall right, it was a little trick of your Ma’s when Men got saucy. Shame ‘em into silence.”

“What are you talking about?” Dís asked, raising her head to look at Dwalin. The moonlight behind the clouds glowed and illuminated his outline, but his dark eyes were hidden.

He lay a hand on her head and guided her back down to lay upon his shoulder. “Hush, and I’ll tell you a tale.

I don’t know if you were born yet, but there was a Mahalmerag celebration one year...had to be before Lord Gertheon ascended to the seat of Dale, he wouldn’t have stood for such nonsense. His _father_ , though, was more careless and he’d been drinking. They used to sing at the Gate to be let in, wassailing, they called it.”

“Then were treated to pudding and punch, I remember,” Dís said, a little impatiently. Dwalin’s rumbling voice was soothing and she was falling asleep. Better he get to the action before she nodded off and missed the whole thing. “So, the Lord of Dale got drunk and made some stupid remarks?”

“Stupid demands. For dwarf-song, sung by a she-dwarf. And then went on about how he’d come to the Gate like a beggar for thirty years and it wasn’t right, not being given something in return. Gertheon, that's right he was grown, but not yet Lord. He tried to smooth things over, talked up the food and the company, but his father just got more incensed. Demanded to be _entertained._ And you know your grandfather, a request he’d honor so long as he could fulfill the terms, but he wouldn’t be _ordered.”_

“Of course not,” Dís mumbled, half-dreaming already. “He was a King.”

“Right he was,” Dwalin agreed, giving her a little jostle. “Hang on, I’m not finished yet.”

“You never _talk,”_ Dís said suddenly, with the boldness that came with losing one’s wits to slumber. “Not to others. Just to me. Me and Thorin and Balin, surely. The lads, sometimes. Why’s that? I’ve always wondered. You’re such a good teller of tales, you remember everything. Seems a shame to keep it locked up inside.”

Dís’s stout fingers traced two joined runes on his chest. They were almost invisible beneath his hair, but she knew they were there, had seen poor Dwalin shorn like a sheep when he got them and couldn’t bear a hug for a few days after. One for strength. The other for knowledge.

“Maybe I only tell my tales to worthy souls,” he said, brushing a few errant locks of hair out of her face. “Do you want to hear the end of this one?”

“Aye,” she crept closer to his warmth, her right arm over his stomach, loosely embracing his waist. “What next?”

“Before anyone came to blows - the Mountain Guard was ready to toss him out, on Auntie’s orders - your Amad stepped out and said she’d sing a pretty tune if they liked. Seeing as how she was a she-dwarf and he’d asked for that especially.”

The idea of her mother giving in to such craven demands struck Dís as being incredibly unlike her and pulled her out of her lethargy. “Ama gave in?” she asked. “You must be...that doesn’t sound right.”

“She didn’t give in,” Dwalin said and she could hear the smile in his voice. “She asked for a fiddler and requested a tune be struck up. Something jolly. She said. About marriage.”

“Marriage?” Dís was truly puzzled. No Man had witnessed a dwarrow marriage in the long history of their race, she was sure, for they were performed in holy places, forbidden to outsiders.

“She meant Mannish marriage and the fiddle-player knew it for she was the cleverest dwarrowdam under the Mountain. It was bit of a bawd, a mockery of marriage brokering and all that nonsense. From a play. It was a bad play, but a good song, if you’re in an ungenerous mood. There was no one in Erebor who felt kindly disposed to Gertheon's father after that.”

“How’d it go?” Dís asked curiously.

Dwalin found her nose in the dark and tweaked it, playfully, “Ah, you won’t be getting me to sing for you, lassie.”

“Mmm,” she pouted her disappointment into his shoulder. “Please?”

“Nay, I hardly recall the words. Let me see. I do remember one bit - ‘When I’m beheaded, at least I was wedded / And when I am buried, at least I was married / I’ll hide my behavior with wine as my savior...’”

Dís snorted, “Oh, no.”

“That’s the tamest verse by _far_. And the Lord was drunk, but not all that drunk. Left in a huff. I suppose some of his retainers were vexed by the tune - it didn’t pay Men any tribute, believe me. But the food and drink was good and Gertheon stayed ‘til he’d drunk his fill, and so left his father sitting in a freezing carriage until they were ready to make their way back,” Dwalin concluded. “I guess giving folks what they ask is a fair kind of revenge, eh?”

“Must be,” Dís nodded. Behind her closed eyelids she tried to imagine the entrance hall of Erebor, lined with huge carved statues, the Mountain Guard splendid in their blue cloaks and the long tables piled high with cakes and sweets and hot punch. It was hard to tell sometimes, whether she was truly remembering Erebor or only remembering what she had been told about Erebor.

Yet she could see, if she strained her memory back far enough, her mother give a cold little smile, all teeth and flashing eyes to the one who would offer such disrespect. Her father would reach for her, try to stop her with hand or word, not understanding what she was about to do. And then she’d sing with that velvet voice of hers, the voice Dís was said to have inherited, though she could not hear it herself. And the Lord of Dale (she imagined him looking awfully like the Master) would go pale and, like the Master, look appalled by the ditty’s end. And her mother would have tossed that lustrous hair, woven with pearls, shining with sapphires, gleaming with gold, and laughed.

But Erebor’s torchlit halls faded from her mind’s eye, replaced with the white-washed plaster of their flat in the Blue Mountains. And their mother’s voice deepened into Thorin’s own, quietly retrained, his blue eyes burning. A wizard had waylaid him in a tavern. Spoken of Erebor. And offered his help to reclaim it.

 _“This task, it’s impossible,”_ he said, sitting with his head in his hands, more than road-weary. Dís did what she could, but he could not be calm that night, his heart inflamed even as his mind rebelled at the very thought of going East again. It was the first time, not the last, that she cursed Gandalf to his very heart. Why him? Why _now?_

And why had he abandoned them? Left them to starve in Mirkwood, to rot in dungeons, to drown in a river, to freeze in a snowstorm and still the wizard, who promised them help, who all but commanded Thorin into Erebor, _still_ he would not come back to them. And here they were. And having come so far, they could not go back.

But how far had they come, really? After how long they’d fallen, they were still made fools of by Men, only now they had not the wealth or influence to throw their gracelessness back in their faces. To laugh openly at those who derided them because they knew their skill and their gold would buy them favor and cooperation. Dís had threatened Men in her day. But she was unused to laughing at them. In the end her fists would speak for her, or else she would bite her tongue and tilt her chin up in stony silence.

Again, Thorin’s words of that long-ago night came back to her.

_“We were once a noble people, not tinkers and merchants scraping around in the dirt for copper coins, but lords. Once we were kings.”_

Though she knew he was sleeping just next door, her heartbeat picked up, faster and faster and she fought the urge to run in and look upon him, overcome with the fear that, no matter what he said earlier that night, he was going to leave her.

“Hey now, easy,” Dwalin said, pulling her closer, kissing her head, her brow, her cheek and nothing more. “What’s wrong?”

Dís clung to him tightly. Dwalin. Their stalwart. Their bedrock. Their dear. Oh, she loved him so.

“Tell me another story,” she asked, closing her eyes, hiding her face in his skin, feeling a scar against her lips.

“As you wish,” he nodded, rubbing his hand over her back. “Happy or sad?”

“Long,” she requested. “Just...talk to me. If I’m worthy.”

“Ah, lass,” he breathed, a great inhale that bad his chest expand beneath her. “None worthier.”

And so he spoke on and on, the prologue of some lay she ought to have known the name of, but had long since forgotten. It was to talk of kings and war and shieldmaidens that she finally fell asleep.

_‘O miracle of women,’ the book said_   
_‘O noble heart, who, being strait-besieged_   
_By this wild king to force her to his wish,_   
_Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier’s death,_   
_But now when all was lost or seemed as lost…’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have quoted SO MANY THINGS. But here ends the first night as guests of the Master. To give credit where credit is due, "The Minstrel Boy" is a song by Thomas Moore, written to commemorate the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the song Freya sang to mock the Men of Dale is "Marry Me" by Emilie Autumn, and the poem Dwalin quotes at the end is "The Princess" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** THERE IS **SEX** IN THIS CHAPTER. **UNMARRIED, UNPROTECTED, SEMI-EXPLICIT, M/F SEX.** Other things happen too, it's just at the end, BUT if you do not want to read about the sex, close your browser window after Balin leaves.

When daylight broke, it was hidden behind grey clouds, howling winds and swirling flakes as the storm raged on. 

“Are winters always like this in the East?” Fíli asked his mother when they went to look in on Bilbo before breakfast. “Isn’t it too early for snow?”

“I think - ” Dís hesitated before she spoke, under pretence of biting back a yawn. Truth be told, she slept far better than she thought she would. She had been so deeply asleep that she had no notion of when Dwalin eased out from under her arms and cheek and left her in bed alone. “I think this is unusual. Bit of bad weather, bodes ill - or is it a bit of bad weather means good luck?”

“You’ll have to ask Mister Óin,” Kíli said, cheerfully bounding up behind them. His hair was hanging limply around his face and Dís’s fingers itched to braid it, neaten it and set it to rights. Too bad he couldn’t have inherited his father’s thick hair like his brother, but was landed with her brothers’ fine locks. Frerin’s hair had been loose and flying in his face the night before the battle, it made him look even younger than he was. 

“How was the night watch, loves?” she asked her sons. They smiled together, like the twin demons they were.

“All clear and secure,” Fíli puffed up his chest and boasted proudly.

“We left him snoring,” Kíli announced, then elbowed his mother in the side. “Breakfast, Mam?”

Dís threw her hands up helplessly, “Find what you can. I’d not be surprised if breakfast was last night’s meal served cold - or at least colder, if they took it off the table and bothered putting it in the larder.”

Fíli patted his stomach carelessly. “The hardiness of dwarves!” he declared, taking his brother by the arm. “Come on, let’s see how much we can pack in before we’re sick.”

“You’ll do more than me,” Kíli remarked enviously. “You’ve got a Broadbeam stomach for food - tell Bilbo we said good morning and hope he’s feeling better.”

“Aye, and that he’d better be,” Fíli added. “If he’s to burgle a dragon!”

Dís reassured the lads that she would give Master Baggins all the cordial greetings of the day - but she might leave off the bit about the dragon, though the Mountain loomed over all and the day of reckoning drew ever nearer. 

She was a little distracted herself from the thought of their grand quest. For the silliest of reasons, but none knew how their task would resolve itself. Glorious victory or glorious death. Sometimes, to their race, it was all one.

And there were smaller victories too, smaller than dragon-slaying and kingdom-claiming, but no less vaunted for all that. The wonderful companionship of a low voice speaking comfortingly on a cold night, bare skin against bare skin and there was Bofur’s voice in her head again, _Go for it, go for it._

Dís realized she’d been haunting Bilbo’s doorway like a spectre for a solid minute before she remembered to knock. “You decent, Bilbo?” she joked, opening the door with a hand over her eyes or modesty’s sake.

The little yip he let out indicated that he was _not_ entirely dressed and only after Dís heard a scramble for cloth did she peek out between her fingers. Bilbo was standing by the washstand, holding his trousers up with both hands, braces dangling. 

“This quest has starved me to the bone,” he lamented, keeping a tight grip on the waistband. 

Dís could plainly see that was a bit of an exaggeration - his cheeks had lost some of their pleasant roundness and his stomach did not quite do its job of holding his trousers up without the aid of his braces, but she had seen starvation and even considering their cold, she had to admit that their little hobbit didn’t look half bad.

“Not to worry,” she said, making an effort to sound as cheery as her lads. “A few good meals’ll set you to rights again.”

“I have no doubt,” Bilbo grumbled, drawing his braces up over his bare and curiously unmarked skin. “But I do very much doubt that we’ll find anything worth eating here - I haven’t seen the pantry, but I am quite certain, giving the supper we sat down to last evening, that it is in an appalling state.”

Pale as milk, but for a dusting of freckles along his back and forearms. Not a single hair to be found, nor any tattoos. Dís supposed it was only natural, all the hair that should have been spread all over having collected on the halfling’s legs and feet, but she couldn’t imagine why Shirefolk shouldn’t mark themselves for milestones. How did they remember their history? Unless, like Bilbo, most of them were scholars and concerned with record-keeping. 

Dís shrugged, “Nothing a dwarrow stomach can’t handle, but we’ll be sure to be your tasters and poison-eaters, if you have a fear. Having a wash? Shall I leave you?”

Bilbo sighed and scrubbed a hand through his matted curls. “Oh, don’t bother. The water in the pitcher’s ice cold - honestly, look.”

The chipped porcelain pitcher did indeed have a fine sheet of ice upon it, though the water looked clean. Dís made do herself with the same that morning, but hobbits (as she constantly reminded herself) were less hardily made than her own people. She took the pitcher from him without a word and ambled off toward the small fire he had going in the grate - flue needed cleaning, from the amount of smoke finding its way back into the room. 

“What are you doing?” he yelped when he saw her holding the pitcher close to the flames. “It’ll crack!”

“No it won’t,” she said, holding the pitcher just so, shielding the places where the pottery was the thinnest with her hands. Bilbo stare at her, mouth open. It seemed after all this time spent together, his companions could still surprise him. When at last the pitcher and the water were heated to lukewarm, Dís returned the pitcher to the bedside table.

“There you are,” she smiled. “That’ll be a ha’penny, for my troubles.”

Bilbo smiled faintly and turned out his pockets. “I haven’t any pennies.”

“Oh, well, that’s alright,” she waved the confession off. “I suppose you did save my brother’s life - twice over - and that’s me in _your_ debt.”

“Oh, no,” he began to protest, but Dís put her hand up and wouldn’t hear a word of it. Blushing, Bilbo turned his attention to the pitcher and basin while Dís cast her eye around the room, all the while wondering how Shirefolk got anything done if they turned so bashful when their clothes came off - how in the world did they manage to make those large families of theirs if a married couple could hardly look at one another for blushing? At the image of a Hobbit lad and lass groping around with their eyes closed, trying to decide what went where imposed itself behind her closed eyelids, she immediately lighted on something else to look at before she laughed out loud.

“You’re quite a deft hand with your little blade,” she complimented him. The dagger was lying, halfsheathed on the floor and she thought immediately that Dwalin would have words with him about the caring and keeping of good steel. “May I?”

“What?” Bilbo asked, turning with a dripping cloth in one hand, half blinded with his wet hair in his eyes. “Oh! Yes, certainly, by all means.”

Dís unsheathed it and swung it idly, testing the weight and balance in her hands. Good little knife, well-forged, lightweight. She prefered weapons with a bit more reach to them, but there was no denying it was an able sword for their burglar. She ran her fingers along the flat of the blade, fingertips tingling slightly. Mithril, of course, mithril. She could have scented it even if she never put her hands to it. 

“I thought to name it,” Bilbo remarked, sounding a little embarrassed with himself, but then, he always did. “You know. Balin was saying that swords that have done great deeds are named. Glamdring and Orcrist.”

“Deathless,” Dís added absently.

Bilbo turned around, but her back was to him. “Beg pardon?”

“Thorin’s sword,” she said. “His real - ah, his, anyway. Passed down through the line. Deathless. And of course...well. Grasper and Keeper. Shame about those, a sore shame, but Dwalin crafted them with his own hands, he can remake them. It won’t be the same, though, he might name them something else when all’s said and done.”

“Does your sword have a name?” Bilbo asked. 

Dís took in a breath and held it. Maybe it did once, but all her mother called it when she laid eyes on it in the days following the battle was Useless. Since then Dís hadn’t thought of it by any title other than ‘Frerin’s.’ 

“If it did, I don’t remember,” she said softly. Testing the blade out in her other hand, she added, “My axe did, though. Dancer. And what a merry time we had.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t find it,” Bilbo apologized. Dís was sorry too, for she had put her heart, sweat and blood into that blade, as she had everything she created. That axe had been her masterwork, but it could be remade - or something very like it. Nothing could be twice made, after all, save their own bodies by the one who was the Maker of all their race. 

"Don't think of it," she advised him. Better lives saved than arms retained. "But tell me more about the havoc you wreaked amongst the spiders. I'm sorry I missed it."

“Oh, well,” he shuffled his feet and pulled his threadbare shirt over his head. “It - ah. I...erm. I did as you said, actually. Kept the pointy end directed at my enemies and away from myself, it actually, they - er. What I mean to say is _I_ thought of a little title, if you will, for my. Erm. Letter-opener.”

“Have you?” Dís asked, with an indulgent smile. She did try _so_ hard not to treat Bilbo as a child, but the size and look of him caused her to forget his age often. He was brighter than she would ever be, of course, but even after all this time he still seemed soft, somehow. In need of looking-after. Though the bags under his eyes and lines around his mouth, more deeply etched for his bout of fever served as an able reminder. “Let’s hear it.”

“Sting,” he said, a little bashfully. “The spiders had their pincers, but I was the fly that bit back.”

Dís laughed approvingly. “I like it,” she said, sheathing the blade. “You’ll want to get that carved in, let everyone know what deeds you’ve done - or, there’s a thought. I’ll do it, if you’d like. Just as soon as I’ve got a hot forge-fire and tools to do a proper engraving, I’ll put anything you like on it. I don’t mean to boast, but I am _excellent_ at close work.”

It occurred to Dís as she was speaking that she sounded more like her sons at that moment than herself. An excited young dwarrowlass who’d just attained her mastery and was eager to show off, but she was not about to apologize for her enthusiasm. In the first place, she really was excellent at close work. In the second, the moment the thought entered her head, it wouldn’t leave her, her hands were practically tingling in anticipation of doing some _work_. Never mind the fact that it was a lifelong ambition of hers to work with mithril, a metal she’d not lain eyes or hands on since she was a wee girl watching her father lock his arms away. 

In the third place, not that she needed more enticement than the first two, it would be a small way of showing her affection and appreciation for Bilbo. Dwarves never worked for free.

This was a quality of her people that Bilbo seemed to have grasped because his eyes went wide, then narrow and his hands were up, palms forward, all ready to refuse. “No, no, no, no - well. No. Unless it’s part of my payment.”

“Consider it a gift,” Dís smiled. “We do give gifts, you know. Not very often, but when a soul’s worthy enough. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you it’d be a great insult for you to refuse me.”

Bilbo chortled, which turned into a cough that only contained a little bit of a wheeze. “I suppose I’ll have to accept,” he said, tucking his shirt back into his trousers. “Then again, if you challenged me to a duel, I could hold my own for a little while.”

“No doubt,” she nodded with approval. “No doubt, but let’s hope you make it easy on both of us. Plan on spending today abed? Or are you feeling up to a walk?”

Bilbo looked between the bed and the door indecisively. “Bed,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “Nasty weather, isn’t it? Nowhere to go.”

She could not argue that there was nowhere to go, but neither could Dís appreciate the desire to remain at rest when one’s body was capable of moving about a bit. Even after she birthed her children, she only wanted a little rest before she was up and about - then again, as she was constantly reminding herself, Bilbo was not of her kind and the ways of Hobbits were not those of Dwarves. 

Once she’d bid him a good-morning and promised to return with anything laid on the table that was actually edible, Dís made her way down to the dining room, trying to ignore the feeling that her skin wanted to slough right off her arms and run away. It wasn’t just the lack of occupation, the whole mouldering ruin around her made her feel uneasy. Despite the fact that it was built of brick, the wooden floors creaked and the wind got in through chinks in the plaster around the windows. A Mannish residence through and through, one no Dwarf could suffer visiting for long without worrying the place was going to collapse around them. 

Despite the chill and frost hovering around it and the alarming protest of a rotting floorbeam underfoot, Dís made her way over to the window. White covered the squalid docks and rooftops, giving the whole of Lake-town a clean, covered-over appearance. Already the snow was stained by chimney smoke and turned to slush on the streets by workers and shopkeeps, up early to do a day’s work despite the cold and ill weather. 

With her nose pressed up against the glass, she fancied she could see the outline of the mountain in the distance. No smoke rose from that peak to ruin the plain sheet of snowfall. Perhaps the worm was dead after all. 

_When the birds of yore return to the Mountain, the reign of the beast will end._

She wasn’t a soothsayer, she wasn’t even learned, but it sounded plain enough. They’d seen a thrush, hadn’t they? Ravens were flying back to the old aviaries. That had to mean something. 

With her face pressed against cold, inscrutable glass, Dís found her thoughts thrown back to the dungeons and the warnings of the Elves. Dead or sleeping? 

“Can you hear it?”

Dís let out a squawk of alarm and immediately went for the dagger in her boot before she realized that it was only her horrible ghoul of an older brother sneaking up on her from behind. Instead of stabbing him, she reached out and gave him a smack on the arm, which he bore without flinching.

“Have you been taking lessons from our hobbit on sneaking?” she asked, heart racing in her chest.

Thorin smirked briefly and shook his head. “You seemed a little preoccupied, I was wondering...you _can_ hear it, can’t you?”

It took Dís a moment to work out what precisely her brother was asking her, but once the import of his query dawned on her, she felt rather badly for hitting him without cause. The song of the Mountain. Of course. 

“Aye,” she nodded, leaning her head against her brother’s shoulder, eyes still staring at the nothingness out the window. Thorin leaned his head atop hers and draped an arm loosely around her waist. 

“When you were little, after...do you remember how you always asked to go home?” 

Dís had to think a moment before she could answer honestly. Those first few days after they were driven from their home were a blur in her mind and a time she tried hard not to think of in the long years that stretched between that moment and the present one. Truly, she did not remember much about what she was thinking and feeling as much as she remembered everyone else. 

Her grandfather’s rage and grief had terrified her because she had never known him, before that time, to be anything other than happy and loving. Her parents’ fighting started up in earnest afterward, but in those days of shock and despair they were as close as they had ever been. Frerin was mostly quiet. Thorin was little more than a boy, but he was her constant companion. When her grandfather’s tears were too much to look at, when her parents looked through her rather than at her, when Frerin could not be counted on keep her company, it was Thorin who she went to, Thorin who saw she was fed and clothed and kept warm. 

Hollow-eyed and grief-stricken, Thorin looked after her as best she could and held her and told her that she was safe. It might have been a lie, but she believed it. 

“I must have been a nuisance,” she replied softly. 

“Not at all,” Thorin murmured. “You were saying what we were all thinking and...I’m trying.”

“I know you are,” she said, pulling away and looking him square in the eyes. “There isn’t a day that’s gone by, not for your whole life where you haven’t tried to do your best by us. And we’re so _grateful_ Thorin.”

Thorin was standing close enough that she could feel the heat coming off him, but his eyes were far away. “Perhaps now…” he trailed off, eyes fixed on the place where they knew the Mountain stood, but could not see it.

“No,” Dís took his hands and forced him to look at her, truly at _her_. “Not now, _always.”_

Thorin tried to look away, but Dís squeezed his hands until they hurt. “There’s precious little to be grateful for,” he said finally.

She could have struck him again, but chose not to. “That’s a...by the Maker, Thorin, I love you very dearly, but you’re the most stone-headed dwarf I’ve ever known. And we’re kin to Glóin. You’ve done right by us all these years. You led us to safety in the Ered Luin, always took care of the worst off and put yourself last of all. Even if...even if we never came here. Even if we never saw Erebor again and you never sat on a proper throne, you’d still be a worthy king. You _know_ that, don’t you?”

Thorin eased his hands out of her grip very gently. He kissed the top of her head, without smiling or saying a word, and turned his back, making his way down the long, lonely corridor.

If she thought it would make an ounce of difference, she’d have seized one of the plaster busts from the stands that lined the hallway and thrown it at her brother’s head. As it was, she was sure that would do nothing but make a mess to clean for the Master’s servants and Thorin would just keep walking.

They were so _close_ , Dís thought, taking another hall to make her way down to the dining hall. So close! And yet, in many ways, they were no closer than they had been when they sat squashed around Bilbo’s dinner table. They had crossed the continent and faced innumerable dangers, but they were not inside the Mountain, they did not know the state of the dragon, in short they had accomplished _nothing._ Given that and all they had suffered, it was little wonder that Thorin was beset by a dark mood.

Such was her preoccupation and speed that Dís almost collided with Balin, coming out another door.

“Where’s the fire?” he asked, arching a bushy white eyebrow when she practically tripped over him. 

“Nowhere,” she sighed. “I’m just...tired, I suppose. Thorin’s in a mood, and I hate this place, and I could die for want of occupation, and now I’m just whinging so I’m going to walk away and hit a wall until I feel better.”

“I’d not advise that,” Balin said, patting her arm in a companionable way. “The whole place might topple around our ears. Spared the dragon’s wrath, but this place has gone to seed as well, no mistaking.”

“Thorin said it was always a corrupted little backwater,” Dís replied and had to bite back a smile when Balin favored her with a particular look that he reserved whenever Thorin was talking out of his arse, but they were in mixed company and he was too polite to say so.

“Thorin’s experience of the world beyond Erebor was...rather limited,” Balin said carefully. “And his knowledge often came filtered through your father, mother and grandparents. I need hardly remind you that they were less circumspect than they could be, at times.”

“Grumpy bastards, the lot of them,” Dís translated. “Well, not grandfather, mostly.”

“Your grandfather was the absolute soul of generosity, kindness, and warmth,” Balin owned. “When he was his best self, but...never mind, it’s all done with now. In any case, Thorin misremembers from time to time. His heart’s in the right place, poor lad.”

Balin’s tone was melancholy and his voice full of sighs. Distantly, Dís recalled a conversation she’d had with Dwalin that first night. _It’s not his nerves he’s worried about._

“Balin,” she ventured reluctantly. He tilted his head up at her and gave her his full attention. Dís resisted the urge to look away or twist her hands together, like a child. “You don’t think...Thorin _will_ be alright, won’t he?”

Thorin was safety and Balin was knowledge. That was the way it had been for Dís as long as she could remember. When she was in doubt, when she had a question, when she was at her wit’s end, she took her concerns to Balin. Balin who, as far as she was concerned, knew everything. 

Balin, who looked away and shook his head. 

“We can none of us know how this will turn out,” he said and that wasn’t what she wanted to hear, it wasn’t any kind of real answer. 

“But Thorin - ”

“Thorin is under a great deal of strain, which promises to grow greater,” Balin said, stating the blindingly obvious. “Strain has, in fact, been his constant companion in life. He has not failed yet.”

Yet. Why should he say ‘yet’ as though there was a possibility that Thorin would fail?

Before Dís could collect herself enough to demand an answer, a _real_ answer, Balin too left her with a comment about finding something to eat. 

Dís did not panic, as a rule. When she was under strain, her focus grew sharp and she managed to block out all other thoughts save those that enabled her to do what she must, to survive. When safety was assured, then she could weep or scream or rage, but until the task was done, she did not permit herself to indulge in panic.

Why, then, did she sink to the floor, fist in her mouth to keep herself from screaming her frustrations to the walls? Dís did not know, all she did know was that if she screamed, she was not sure she would ever be able to stop.

Shaking and choking back sobs, Dís slid to the floor, head on her knees and wept until she heard someone approaching her, heavy footfalls that made the floorboards groan and set the silver in the curio cabinets to rattling. There was no time to flee before she was spotted and even if she ran, where would she go? 

_I want to go home,_ she thought, chest aching and eyes burning as her ears pounded with a song she could hardly remember. She didn’t even know where home was.

Big rough hands were on her head, calloused thumbs touched her face, and a rumbling voice asked, so tenderly, “What’s all this, then?” 

“I don’t know,” Dís moaned to Dwalin without looking up. No matter, he hooked his hands under her arms and pulled her to her feet, bundling her into a room, whose room she had no idea. She didn’t even raise her head until her legs found the front of a bed and she sat upon it heavily, wiping furiously at eyes that wouldn’t stop tearing. 

Dwalin sat down next to her and guided her head down until it was on her shoulder, hushing her apologies for blubbing at him and quieting her protests that she was really _fine_ when it was clear she absolutely was not.

“What’s wrong?” he asked when her weeping tapered off somewhat. One of his hands was rubbing her back and the other stroked her hair, Dís didn’t know whether she wanted to lie in his arms forever or be sick all over him. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Everything. I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m not...I’m not sad, I don’t know why I should be crying.”

She had reasons enough, she supposed. Dwalin could just pick one and be satisfied.

He did not ask again. Dís was hardly conscious of leaning into him further or his leaning back, but somehow they fell together upon the bed, his arms encircling her and her hands gripping his shirt, tucked up against his chest. Dwalin’s lips moved against her hair, her brow, her temple. Gentle, soft, and though he held her close he did not hold her tightly. 

Dís’s trembling lips pressed against his chest, where the neck of his tunic lay undone exposing skin a shade lighter than his bronzed arms. Then she tilted her head up and kissed his throat. Before her mouth found his, Dwalin lay a hand upon her shoulder and requested, quietly, “Stop.”

Dís pulled away, swallowing hard, wiping her face again. She’d stopped crying, but her eyes and nose were red, her eyelashes wet. With a voice that shook only a little she asked, “Why?”

Dwalin did not push her away, but neither did he move any closer. “Because you’re upset. And it wouldn’t be right.”

“I’m upset,” she acknowledged hoarsely. “But that’s not why it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be right...why wouldn’t it be right?”

Ninety years of objections. Ninety years of shying away from the matter of pretending or worse, admitting and not acting, of holding him close and kissing his cheek or his forehead or, when she was feeling particularly cheeky, the top of his head without ever once asking for more, ever once admitting that there could be more.

No, that wasn’t quite true. Once, years ago, when she was a mother and a widow and still so very young she’d said if she would marry again it would be him she chose. And she’d kissed him then and he’d kissed her and she’d run away. At the time, running away seemed the most sensible because she couldn’t, just couldn’t. Not again, couldn’t make herself vulnerable to hurt again. Everyone she loved always seemed to die. She was allowed three and three alone to let in to her innermost heart. Fíli. Kíli. Thorin.

But didn’t Dwalin have her heart, already? Hadn’t he always? And despite all her efforts to safeguard her family, weren’t they all at risk here in this place of horrible uncertainty?

She had her reasons why it could never happen, why it wouldn’t be right. She’d tried to recite them to Bofur, at the time they appeared to be entirely valid.

Now she was having trouble recalling a single one of them.

Dwalin seemed to be at as much of a loss as she was. His lips were slightly parted, but he did not speak and she gathered up all the shreds of her courage and raised her eyes to look into his. Dark. Wary. Hopeful.

“May I kiss you?” she asked, laying her own hand against the side of his face. Gently. Easily shaken off. “Please.”

Dwalin swallowed. Then nodded. Then spoke. “You may.”

The sensation of his beard against his face was a tickle that went right down her spine, a delicious resurgence of remembered passion and the thought, _Ah, and here again is what closeness can be._

She had longed for him and he for her. The sound Dwalin made against her mouth was half that of a dying soul gasping for breath and half that of a drowning man emerging from the water. His hands tangled in her hair and hers gripped his shoulders, they clung to one another and though Dís was still trembling, her eyes were dry at last.

She only pulled away long enough to catch her breath and pull her tunic over her head. Dwalin’s eyes flickered down over her body for an instant before they locked on her face again. He smoothed a hand over the short edges of her beard and she saw the thoughts flashing through his mind, _Widow, widow, widow._

“Widows take lovers, all the time,” she said, face coloring a little. She paused before she removed her underthings and Dwalin kissed her again, deeply, tasting her mouth before he turned his attentions lower. 

“I’d want more than that, lass,” he breathed into her skin. “Coming in after dark, leaving before dawn. Not abiding under the same roof. I don’t just _want_ you. I love you.”

“I know,” she said, fingers tightening upon dingy cotton. “I love you do, I always have. I always will. And I’d...I don’t want to be parted from you.”

They did not speak like this, they had no experience speaking like this to one another, about one another. For nearly a century they’d held their tongues and curbed their speech, communicating with glances and tight muscles and half-sentences. To speak so plainly made Dís feel more exposed than undressing ever could. 

“You - ” Dwalin faltered and started again, with an effort. “You said you couldn’t. Not again.”

“I was very young,” she replied. “And I was afraid.”

“And now?”

“I’m not so young,” Dís admitted. “And I’m still afraid. Afraid of losing you - _all_ of you. But isn’t it better...isn’t it better to be happy for a little while, anyway? I think it might be, this quest...we don’t know how it will turn out. But the reward is worth the risk. And _this_...you. Are a reward worth the risk. For me. I - I mightn’t be for you, and I’ve been so long about it that if you - ”

Dwalin shut her mouth with a kiss. 

“Lass,” he said seriously. “You are all the treasure I ever need, all the life I could ever want, and there is nothing I wouldn’t risk for your sake. Now and always.”

Dís smiled, a nervous little thing. And proceeded to bare more of her skin to Dwalin’s appreciative gaze. 

Once he removed his own clothes, they spend a while seeing one another anew, relearning the shape of scars and tattoos that they had seen a thousand times with hands and mouths. He was especially worshipful of her belly and breasts, lined with white scars, long faded by time, the marks of bearing two living sons. When his head dipped lower, following the dark line of hair down her stomach to the patch between her legs, she watched the muscles in his shoulders and back work.

Dwalin was thickly covered over in dark hair and browned skin, strength was writ deep in every line of him and she thought, as he brought her closer and closer to her peak with every movement of tongue and fingers, that he ought to be captured in marble or in bronze. It would reflect the nobility of his body, but not the warmth of his eyes; that secret would be hers alone to savor. 

When he made a boneless, gasping, sweating mess of her, she reached down and urged him up again, using her trembling legs and steady arms to flip him beneath her. Dís’s hair was long and flowed in waves to tickle his chest. She was wet and throbbing, he was hard for her and she saw him reach to take himself in hand, but she closed her hand around his wrist to stop him. 

“I haven’t got a sheath,” he said, voice a tight rumble that went right through her. 

Dís smiled again, a little smirk and tossed her hair as if she hadn’t a care in the world, as if this wasn’t the final stand of a body suddenly desperate to squeeze every ounce of happiness she could out of life before it was all snatched out from under her. 

“Despite what they say about me in the village,” she remarked airly, “I’m not a woman of Men. And I want this very badly. So I don’t mind f you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Dwalin replied at once. 

They didn’t bed like this, either of them. Not with these lingering touches and slow, soft kisses, cries muffled in flesh or bedclothes. When they were finally joined together, they bit back moans and grunts, slowly rode through the heat and sensation with all the care and tenderness in the world. Outside the storm raged and the wind howled, but the world might have been ending for all they cared. Perhaps it was because the world might be ending that they allowed themselves the indulgence of one another.

The hall clock chimed the hour, almost noon, but neither made a move to rise from the bed. They lay much as they had the night before, Dwalin on his back, Dís’s head pillowed on his shoulder and her hand over his heart. The steady beat lulled her and she allowed herself to indulge in the illusion of safety and security afforded by Dwalin’s strong arms and broad chest. He kissed her face again and again and she kissed him, slowly, eyes open, memorizing his face as it appeared in that moment. 

Dwalin’s gold-flecked eyes were soft and heavy, lidded, he looked at her as if she was wrought of gold or mithril and twice as precious. 

“I love you,” she said because she meant it and she wanted to and she thought she should say it as often as she could. While she could. “I love you. And I wish I’d been brave sooner.”

Dwalin kissed her once again, on her brow, breathing in the scent of her hair, damp and matted with sweat. “You’ve always been brave,” he said. “Bravest lass I know. I’ve said it before, there’s not a thing about you I’d change. Not a thing. I love you. And let that be the end of it.”

If only it could be. If only they could stay on that sunken mattress beneath those mouldering blankets forever. If only love alone could truly sustain them; if love was power enough to sustain them all, they would never hunger or thirst or want for anything again.

But the world did not turn by the power of love and the Mountain loomed outside, surrounded by that falling snow and howling wind. Even as Dwalin and Dís lay in silence, they could still hear its song in their hearts.


	44. Chapter 44

She’d fallen asleep. She must have fallen asleep. For a long, splendid minute, the only thing Dís was conscious of was a warm presence beneath her and a steady heartbeat thumping under her ear. 

Dís slept better when she had a bedfellow and such a bedfellow as Dwalin was a treat. He was sturdy and solid, his arm around her a steady reassurance. To wake in such a manner every day would be a blissful thing indeed. There was a pang of regret for years gone by, but she buried that beneath her present contentment. Regardless of the fact that she was approaching wakefulness, Dís kept her eyes shut tight and didn’t move a muscle. She wanted to stretch this moment out as long as she could, into forever, if it was possible.

Of course, it wasn’t possible. She must have stiffened or shifted or else her eyelids fluttered because Dwalin moved beneath her, though he did not push her away. On the contrary, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close, tracing the axes inked on her back with rough fingertips that made her shiver, though she was wonderfully warm. 

“How long’ve I been out?” she asked, the sound muffled against his chest. 

“No idea,” Dwalin replied quietly. “You put me to sleep - that’s a compliment, by the bye, before you get tetchy.”

“I’m never tetchy,” Dís yawned, running a finger along a notch taken out of his side. Axe-wound - no, no, a scythe. Another inch deeper and he’d have bled out. 

Dwalin chuckled and Dís wrapped her arm fully around his waist, trying to catch the sound and hold it to her if she could. “No? Must be thinking of someone else.”

They were quiet a little longer. The wind no longer howled as it had done and the light shone white and bright through the ragged curtains. It must be nearing noontime and Dís said as much, then wished she hadn’t for Dwalin sat up and inched toward the end of the bed. 

“Best get up before they come looking,” he said, rising to his feet and dressing. She watched him for a long time, so long she felt lecherous, but she didn’t know when she’d have the chance again. Dwalin ruined the moment by throwing her trousers at her and whistling to get her attention. “Up you get. Mark me, there’ll be pounding on the door in five minutes, no more.”

“Ah, let them,” Dís said, throwing the blankets off and doing as she was bid. “There’s nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

“Exactly. They’ll run mad from boredom and come to pester you,” he said knowingly. His eyes too lingered as Dís dressed herself and it wasn’t long before his hands found their way into her hair. It had fallen out of its braids entirely and taken to curling

“As bad as Kíli’s,” she muttered, drawing her hands up to cover his. Dwalin smiled down at her and shook his head. 

“Nah, it’s comely,” he said, batting her fingers away as she tried to straighten the black mop that grew out of her head. “Leave it a bit.”

Dís huffed impatiently, blowing a strand out of her face. _“You_ were the one who said we’d best hurry, otherwise we’d be missed.”

“Well, I changed my mind,” Dwalin said loftily, like a great big overgrown child. Dís tried to look cross, she really did, but her will was no match for the twinkle in Dwalin’s eye. Her tunic still lying on the floor in a heap, she put her arms around his neck and tilted her head up for another kiss which Dwalin was all too happy to grant her.

Kissing him felt as natural as anything, as if she’d been doing it all her life and didn’t need to take time to learn the feel of his mouth against hers, the brush of his beard on her skin; just like it was meant to be.

Such things could not last forever and soon enough a knock sounded just as the door opened. They didn’t have time to break apart before an annoying sing-song voice rang out, “Namad! Are you in here? Not like you to miss a - ”

Nori froze on the threshold of the room and Dís and Dwalin turned their heads, leveling him with matching glares and simultaneous shouts of, _“NORI!”_

For a second, he looked cowed, embarrassed, like a child who’d come into its parents’ room at an inopportune time and had seen something it never wanted to see. The look was quickly gone, replaced by a devilish whistle, a smile and an absolutely devious rubbing of the hands. “Oh- _ho,_ now! What a blessed day indeed! Has the world been re-Made and I missed it? Because I thought you’d _never_ get round to - ”

Dís got out of Dwalin’s embrace and took a threatening step toward Nori, fists raised. 

“GET OUT!” she bellowed, but perhaps she ought to have ordered him to stay and shouted threats. The little thief _skipped_ out, whooping and shouting a victory song at the top of his lungs as he raced down the corridor. 

Dís massaged her eyes with her fingers and muttered, “I ought never have sought him out the day I lost him in the marketplace. That little whelp’s more trouble than he’s worth.”

“I’ve been saying the same for years,” Dwalin growled, looking murderously at the spot Nori had run from. “But you have a soft spot.”

“That’s crusted over,” Dís said matter-of-factly. She finished dressing quickly and tied her hair back without a care for its appearance since no _doubt_ Nori had spread the word to anyone who would listen to his yammering. She wasn’t ashamed, not that at all, but she was annoyed at the prospect of all the Company knowing their business. For the shortest time, the world consisted of only the two of them and it was such a lovely dream she hadn’t wanted it to end.

“I could have his tongue out,” Dwalin offered. “Pickle it. Give it to you for your Name Day.”

“Too late now,” Dís sighed. “He’s quick as a cat and not as discreet - thanks for the offer, though. I appreciate it.”

The left the room together - no sense trying to make a pretense now, their friends and kin would only tease them more if they tried to pretend nothing had happened. Dwalin looked twice as surly as usual and Dís felt her lips purse despite every effort to maintain a neutral expression. They found the rest of the Company where they expected to see them - in the dining hall. What they did not expect was for half the room to stand up, whistling, cheering and applauding when they walked in. 

Some refrained, of course. Óin pretended he hadn’t seen them come in and feigned profound deafness when the clapping began. Balin laughed and shook his head, but did not make a spectacle of himself, while Dori only rolled his eyes heavenward at his comrades’ ill-disguised glee. Ori giggled behind his hands and it was hard to tell whether Fíli or Kíli looked more confused at the commotion roused by their mother and cousin walking into a room at the same time. 

Thorin was grinning from ear-to-ear like a loon and it was only that which made the ridiculous pleasure the rest of the room took in her private life bearable to Dís. “You’re all stark-raving mad,” she announced, folding her arms across her chest. “And I’m ashamed to know every last one of you.”

“If I see a single coin passing hands, I’ll have your fingers,” Dwalin glowered, paying particular attention to Glóin who took his hands out of his pockets with wide, innocent eyes and a knowing smirk.

“As if I’d lay coin down on my own cousins’ business,” he scoffed. 

“I can say, with total honesty, that Glóin’s hands are clean of any wagering,” Nori declared. “But Hervor owes me ten guilders. I thought it’d take less than a century and I was right, but only just, you two nearly cost me - ”

“Nori, button your lips; Dwalin promised me your tongue for my Name Day, but I don’t think I want to wait that long,” Dís informed him. “And my knifework might be sloppier than his.”

“Less than a century for what?” Kíli asked, looking around him in confusion. “What’d I miss?”

“Well, Kíli, m’lad, it’s like this,” Bofur said, throwing an arm around his shoulders and speaking dreamily. “When there’s a pair o’dwarves what fancies each other - or’re bored or the worse for drink - ”

“Stop!” Fíli shouted, jamming his fingers in his ears. “You’re all liars and scoundrels, to a dwarf, and you’re just winding us up and I’d like you to stop, please, as I’ve just eaten.”

“But I still don’t understand…” Kíli began, wiggling out from under Bofur’s arm, but Fíli silenced him with a look.

“There’s naught to understand,” he informed his younger brother flatly. “Everyone’s gone out of their wits for lack of occupation, Mam’s got the right of it.”

“In fact,” Balin said, forestalling any further commentary, “we may have a solution to remedy everyone’s restlessness. The storm’s blown itself out, Thorin thought that those who are willing could venture out and get the lay of the land before we continue on in earnest.”

Thorin nodded, his mouth thinning, suddenly the very picture and image of the solemn King Under the Mountain that most of his subjects were accustomed to seeing. Until his eyes found Dís and Dwalin again and he _winked_ at them, “If you’re not too weary. Or would rather have a lie-down…”

Dwalin, right-hand of the King, Thorin’s staunchest supporter and defender crossed to his lord and kinsman in three quick strides and got him in a headlock. “You are an arse and I hate you,” he said, driving his knuckles hard into Thorin’s scalp.

Thorin retaliating by driving his elbow into Dwalin’s ribs. “You are my brother and I love you,” he retorted, sweet as honey. 

“Venture where?” Dís asked, in a vain effort to turn the tide of conversation away from herself and Dwalin. As nice as it was to see Thorin smiling and joking, she thought the mirth had worn a little thin. Really, the matter couldn’t have weighed on their minds all _that_ heavily, could it?

At last Óin deigned to pay her a bit of attention. “There’s an overlook a few miles hence, gives a clear view of Dale, the lads have it in their heads to do some snowshoeing. I’ll stay behind with the burglar, I’ve no need to visit the place; I’ve seen it before and my memory’s still good.”

“I could take a walk,” Dís said. Most of the rest of the Company agreed that the exercise would be welcome, but Bifur and Bombur decided that they’d rather stay behind with Óin and Bilbo. The lads were champing at the bit, Ori included, though he lamented that he’d lost his notebook to the Elves. 

“I hope they didn’t read it,” he wished aloud, tugging on the straggly ends of his beard morosely. “It isn’t any of their business...ooh, I oughtn’t have done it in Elvish, what a mistake!”

“Would’ve been a fine masterwork,” Balin offered consolingly, but his words did little to ease the gloomy look on Ori’s face. 

“Just be grateful it wasn’t something more important lost,” Dori spoke up sharply. 

Nori nudged his younger brother and winked, “Like Dori’s darning kit, eh? What a tragedy that would have been!”

That set Dori off and the brothers’ bickering provided a soothing background chatter as they made their way out of the Master’s home. Very few ventured out onto the icy docks and walkways. It was bitterly cold, but aside from their ill-fitting Mannish garments, the dwarves had nothing to wear to keep them warm. It was of little consequence, the walk heated their blood enough that they were little troubled by the chill. 

Thorin walked a little ahead of the rest of them, eyes fixed on something on the horizon, but what Dís could not make out. She jogged a little ahead of the rest of them to walk in stride with her brother, bumping her shoulder against his to draw his attention. Thorin looked a little surprised to see her, but his far-away expression vanished and he grinned boyishly, giving her a little shove back. 

“Was this a great scheme of yours, then?” she asked him, doing her best not to smirk, but she was so happy to see the mantle of sorrow lift from her brother’s eyes that she couldn’t help herself. “Get all the gossips out and walking so their breath’s got better occupation than nattering at each other.”

“Something like,” Thorin nodded, then shook his head and smiled. “Nah, we’re happy for you, Nori burst in like his boots were on fire.”

“Probably because he didn’t want Dwalin to catch him and make good on his promise,” Dís speculated, casting a dark look over her shoulder. “Still might make good on mine, even if _his_ temper’s cooled. And you’ll never convince me Óin’s been anything like happy since we left the Blue Mountains.”

“Óin’ll come round,” Thorin shrugged. “He’s a bit old-fashioned, that’s all. It’s about time something good happened. It’s about time.”

There was satisfaction in Thorin’s voice, but also wistfulness. Dís walked close beside him for a while, not saying anything. Then, gently, she took his hand and the two walked in silence, side by side, for a quarter of a mile or more. Fíli and Kíli did not pester their mother and uncle, their attentions were fixed on Balin, trying to wring every last remembrance out of him about how fine a city Dale was.

“It was a jewel of a place,” Balin said finally. “Shops that sold _everything_ , any confection you could imagine was there for the taking. Fine clothes, finer jewels, passing theatre troupes stopped there first, before they moved on the Mountain. It was a remarkable place. But don’t ask anymore.”

“Why not?” Kíli asked. “It sounds a dream!”

“Could you keep this in mind for a time when I’ve got pen and ink, Mister Balin?” Ori asked, nibbling his lower lip in distraction. “Only I want to take it all down.”

“No point, lad,” Glóin informed him gruffly, moving steadily past them, toward the front of the group. 

“But why?” Fíli asked, but the breath caught in his throat and he realized why even before Nori stood, staring over his shoulder at the burnt out husk before them and answered his question.

“Because it’s gone.”

They had reached the overlook. And their eyes, disbelieving and pained by turns, took in the sight of the place that had been Dale. The domed rooftops were toppled and burned, the whole place was black and crumbling. There were places among the wreckage, buildings that gave a hint of what had been, but their use, homes, shops, temples or palaces, was impossible to discern. The Mountain loomed over all, but there was no sunlight piercing through the clouds and she cast no shadow. 

The time for mirth and joking was passed. Dís forgot to be annoyed with her fellows for sticking their noses in where it didn’t belong and she squeezed Thorin’s hand tightly in her own. No more smiles, no more laughter; not when facing a tomb. 

Bofur hung back a bit from the group, but his eyes went wide and he plucked the hat from his head, twisting the wool in his hands. “So many people…” he began, but could not think of a way to finish the thought that would do them justice. 

Kíli found his mother, he wrapped his arms around her waist and tucked his chin up on her shoulder, without saying a word. Dís dropped her brother’s hand and lay her hands on Kíli’s arms. “I didn’t think it’d be...how did anyone get out?”

“Same way we did,” she said softly. “We ran.”

Fíli, standing closer to Thorin, shivered. “I can’t imagine - ” he started, but his uncle cut him off.

“Good,” Thorin said shortly, though his voice was not angry. “It’s not a memory I’d wish on any, but one of my enemies. One with a heart to feel grief, anyway.”

Man or Dwarf that day it made little difference. Unnumbered souls fell before the dragon’s wrath. So precious few lived to flee the desolation. It had been so long that their lives had passed into legend among the heirs of Dale, but living memory made ashen the faces of the Dwarves and made their eyes mist over with tears. If their hearts trembled in the face of what had happened to those who faced the dragon and what they might yet suffer, not a one showed it in their voice or expression. 

The morning’s joy forgotten, one by one they turned away and made the trek over snow and ice back to their lodgings, hearts heavy, and the Mountain at their backs.

"Uncle," Fíli ventured when the remains of Dale were well out of view. "Why'd you want to come here? We'll be passing it soon enough."

Thorin was quiet a long while, so long that Fíli licked his lips and looked back at his mother questioningly, wondering if he ought to ask again or let the matter lie. Dís gave a minute shake of the head to bid him hold his tongue; Thorin's ears were as good as ever and if it was a question that wanted answering he would do so in his own time. 

A sigh escaped him before Thorin drew in breath to speak. "To remember," he said softly. "To remember why we are here."

 _How could we forget?_ Dís almost asked, but kept her peace. Thorin walked a little ahead of them all, just out of reach. His hands were clasped behind his back and the curtains of his hair hid his face from view; she hadn't any idea what he was thinking and could not think of the right words to ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to squeeze some good humor out of this chapter, but it's really all downhill from here. One last night in Lake-town, then it's off to Erebor!


	45. Chapter 45

They concluded their stay in Lake-town with a feast, or something like it. The Master laid out food and drink with them, but as he had avoided them since that first dinner, tonight he also refused to sup with them.

“Could be he means to poison us,” Nori remarked cheerfully, digging into a drumstick.

Dori batted the thing out of his hand and scowled at him, “Odd how the notion does nothing to curb your appetite.”

“I’ve always thought poison a fair way to make an end of it; full and drunk,” Nori replied, tucking into his food all the better, smirking and Dori’s visible disdain.

Thorin was drinking, occasionally, and not eating. Every so often he rallied himself enough to poke at his meat with his knife, but it did not make the journey from his plate to his mouth.

 _Someone ought to scold him,_ Dís thought, staring down at her own meal. _Tell him to keep his strength up._ She should probably say something. Only she didn’t feel much like eating either.

A roll hit her in the side of the head.

“Namad!” Nori shouted. It was clear he’d thrown the roll, he was too far away to kick her under the table. “There weren’t pools for swimming under the Mountain, were there? Settle a dispute.”

“There were pools,” she nodded, taking a swallow of beer. She’d learned to swim in those pools. Taught by her grandmother in a cool cavern. The floor and ceilings were covered with jewels and mosaics. The water made the colors shimmer on the ceiling.

Or was it the baths that had the mosaics? No, the baths were hot and filled with steam. Smooth carved walls and ceilings. Frescos?

“I don’t remember,” she shook her head and finished her drink. Bofur poured her another one and she nodded her thanks, but kept her eyes on the tabletop. “Don’t ask me.”

“There were pools - ” Glóin confirmed, but Nori cut him off.

“Cold water?”

“Aye, which I would have _said_ , if you let me finish,” Glóin grumbled. “Cold-water marble pools, for those who wanted to learn to swim.”

“Odd skill, for a dwarf,” Bilbo said, with a little shudder.

“Some didn’t take to it,” Balin acknowledged. “But there was water running through the rock, any who traded aboveground or traveled did well to learn it...and some of us had another incentive.”

Thorin’s lips curled up slowly and he caught Balin’s eye with a small grin. “You think Grandmother was an ‘incentive?’”

“More like an insistence,” Balin admitted, winking.

“A hurricane, most like,” Óin spoke over all of them, but even he was smiling behind his beard. “Queen under the Mountain, was she ever.”

“This is the giant? The warrior-queen?” Bofur asked, sitting up a bit straighter in his seat. He elbowed Dís in the arm. She gave him a ghost of a smile, quick to vanish. Her grandmother taught her to swim, but she did not remember the lessons clearly. A warm, huge hand under her stomach.

_Kick your legs; the water wants you to sink. Fight back._

Sink she did. The water made the colors around her blur, but strong arms plucked her up and settled her on a hip, rubbing her back.

_Alright, get it out. Then back in you get, you’re nearly there._

Voice as deep as a mine, long silver hair always bound back. Dark tattoos over her face chest and arms. Those little impressions and her own common name was all Dís had of her grandmother.

But she was being spoken of and Dís knew she owed her memory the honor of attention.

“She’d be the sparring partner for the senior-most apprentices,” Dwalin was explaining. “My father always said there wasn’t a warrior with more cunning or a better archer. She’d seen more than two-hundred years and her eyes were _still_ sharp as a seventy-year-old.”

“Everyone was terrified of her,” Dori informed them. Then, hearing a chorus of, _Oh, no, that’s unfair!_ held his hands up and amended, _“I_ was terrified of her.”

“You?” Ori asked, all astonishment. “You’re not afraid of anything!”

“A credit to my lady Queen,” Dori said, sniffing the butter. He must have found it acceptable for he applied it to a dry cut of steak liberally.

“There was no cause to be frightened of her if you weren’t doing anything she didn’t like,” Thorin said, taking another drink of grog. “Were you planning on infiltrating the vaults?”

Dori rolled his eyes at Thorin, “I think you’ve mistaken me for my brother.”

“Oh, come along, I couldn’t have robbed the vaults when I was four,” Nori said, grinning ear to ear and bowing graciously at Dori. “But I _thank you_ for having such faith in my deviousness during my tenderest years.”

“Tender,” Dori mumbled, cutting at his steak with pursed lips. “I wish I could say as much for this meat.”

“Ah, the vaults,” Glóin sighed, eyes going a little glazed at the memory. “I remember the coat Auntie had off of the drake that killed old King Dáin. There was a shield embedded in the creature’s belly, had to have been commissioned for a man, it was tall as one - and impractical. Solid gold, covered in diamonds...mostly covered in diamonds…”

He trailed off and suddenly became terribly interested in his potatoes. Fíli raised his head and grinned like a wolf, “Oh-ho, I sense a fine tale’s being denied me - Kíli, is there a good story in there, you think?”

“Oh, aye,” his brother nodded, running down the table and squeezing in between Glóin and Balin. “Go on, why was it only _mostly_ covered in diamonds?”

Glóin looked about to shake him off, but seemed to change his mind. “This tale doesn’t leave this room,” he said warningly. “You understand?”

“Can we tell Gimli?” Ori asked.

“You absolutely may _not_ tell Gimli,” Glóin said. It was clear from the way the lads met one another’s eyes and covered their mouths with their hands that telling Gimli would be the first order of business once they were reunited.

 _If_ they were reunited. Dís sighed and knocked back her second beer. She couldn’t shake the melancholy that settled around her shoulders like a cloak after looking at Dale. Warriors filled the nights before battle with drinking, singing and the telling of tales. Did it truly stave off the worry, or did it only give them something else to talk about?

“If you don’t tell, I will,” Balin threatened with a twinkle in his eye. “And they have my permission to tell young Gimli whatever they well; we can’t have him thinking his adad is perfect, can we?”

“Do you mean to say his adad _isn’t_ perfect?” Glóin asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’ll be news to my wife. And my mother.”

Dís snorted and kicked Glóin under the table. “Your mother maybe - your wife? I’m not sure about that.”

“I want a story!” Kíli demanded. “Go on, Mister Glóin. Ori’s lost his notebook, so we’ll probably botch the retelling, if that makes you feel better.”

“It doesn’t.” Seeing that he was defeated in this, Glóin took a breath and a drink before he began. “It started - as all the best stories start - with Frerin.”

Bilbo, in his place between Bombur and Bofur, lifted his head and gave Glóin his full attention. Dís wasn’t surprised; in her experience _everyone_ loved a story about Frerin.

“Frerin,” he went on, “didn’t pay much mind to seasons aboveground - proper dwarf, you might say. Well, he got it in his head one fine day that he thought he could go in for a spot of sledding. At midsummer. You see the problem.”

They did indeed see the problem, but Frerin found a solution. Evading the childminders _and_ they Mountain Guard - along with a little help from a key pilfered from his father’s keyring - they were granted access to the treasure room and they soon found their prize. The selfsame shield, useless in battle, but perfectly suitable for sliding down neatly piled mounds of ancient coins.

“How long did you two go at it?” Bombur asked, delighted by the story as everyone else was. “Must’ve been caught ere long!”

“We were,” Glóin admitted. “Crashed into the Mountain Guard’s ceremonial armor, had to be from the reign of Náin I. Uncle Fundin’s friend found us - oh, what was his name? Mister...ach, he had red hair, his face was quick to match if you got him outside for more than ten minutes…”

“Loni,” Dwalin and Balin spoke at once.

“That’s it,” Glóin nodded. “I didn’t remember his name, but I’ll always remember what he said. Yellow-livered cowards, we both made to run, but we tripped and fell over the mess, he caught us. Got right down, saw what we’d been doing. He took us each, one hand on each shoulder. Looked deadly serious. Then he started _laughing_ and said, “Lads. I’ve got to punish you. No two ways about it. What you’ve done is very wrong. But it’s the best use that shield’s seen in a hundred years, or like to see a hundred years hence and I commend you for it.’”

Everyone laughed and Fíli asked, “Did you get punished?”

“Of _course_ we did!” Glóin replied. “Oh, aye. Picked up every coin we scattered. Sorted them too, and the diamonds that were knocked out of the shield. And, it being so late when we finished, were sent to bed without supper. I didn’t talk to your uncle for a week.”

“Oh, that’s not fair!” Kíli exclaimed. “It wasn’t his fault you were caught!”

“It was his idea!” Glóin said defensively.

“You are every inch our father’s son,” Óin muttered, then pretended not to hear when his brother asked him what exactly he meant to imply by that.

“You agreed to go,” Thorin chuckled, shaking his head.

“He was very persuasive,” Glóin folded his arms over his chest. “And I didn’t have many other playmates.”

“Oh, poor wee Glóin,” Dís cooed, with perhaps a little _too_ much sympathy to be believed. “You were born in a bit of a dry spell, weren’t you?”

Before too much pitying clucking could be had over Glóin’s lack of playmates, Dori cut in, worrying about the security of the treasurehouse; it had to have been slack if two children could stroll in, utterly undetected.

That led to a long conversation about the merits of the Mountain Guard versus the cunning of determined dwarflings and concluded with a discussion of what everyone’s favorite treasure was that Erebor boasted.

Oddly, Glóin said he favored that gaudy, obviously commissioned, essentially useless shield. Sentimentality, he said, now that they had him thinking about it.

Balin said his mother’s wedding veil was always one of his favorite pieces. Interlinked, delicate golden mail set around a circlet encrusted with diamonds and rubies. It hadn’t been made for her, but for one of the Queens of old, but King Thrór insisted it be reworked to fit her head. His gift for her wedding day, precious and priceless.

There was a particular window that Dwalin said he’d always been fond of. Glasswork, stained a thousand different hues that set the whole throneroom glowing when the light from outside hit it the right way.

Óin said that his father had commissioned a set of silver pens, delicately carved. You couldn’t tell they were anything special until you got up close. He was never allowed to touch them, so there was an element of longing that explained his partiality.

Dori said that his mother had an heirloom chain, simple, but there was a beautifully cut diamond as big as an egg dangling from the end. Never failed to catch the eye.

Nori shrugged and said he didn’t know.

Dís hesitated when the eyes around the table fell on her. There was the necklace of pearls that her mother wore...that she and Frerin broke. She only cringed at that memory, it didn’t really make her laugh. Her father’s chains of office were another adornment she remembered well, she’d hold them when she rode on his back, like reins.

But were they favorites? Or merely objects she remembered well?

She was about to ask them to give her a pass, but then she remembered. “There was a necklace,” she said slowly, looking at her brother as if for confirmation. “Emeralds. Must’ve been hundreds of them.”

“A thousand,” Thorin confirmed, smiling encouragingly. “Made for the Lord of Dale. He never paid for it, not the price that was asked. So we kept it.”

“Aye,” Dís nodded. “It...well, I was only little at the time, I thought it was so grand. All those shining green stones - _flawless_ \- on a golden chain. You wouldn’t have thought the chain could hold them all, it seemed delicate, but it was strong. Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“No,” her brother said immediately after she spoke, still smiling, but it had gone sharp around the edges. “The prettiest thing under the Mountain - if pretty’s the word for it, seems paltry - is the Arkenstone. Uncut white gem, that glowed with a light from within. It was big as a grown dwarf’s fist. You remember it, don’t you?”

His hand lay on her arm, squeezing tight. “Don’t you?”

If she’d imbibed just one more drink, she would not have noticed. If she hadn’t been sitting so close by, Dís would never have thought twice about it. It was such a little thing, only that the look in her brother’s eyes was no longer kindly, but desperate and his knuckles stood out bone white from the surrounding skin due to how tightly he was gripping her arm. And something fluttered in her gut, like the proverbial canary in the mineshaft, beating its wings. _Danger. Danger_ , it called in the darkness, drowned out by the sound of metal on stone. _You’re running out of air._

“Of course I remember,” Dís said, covering her brothers hand with her own and giving his fingers a squeeze of reassurance. “Of course.”

The Arkenstone. None of them mentioned it, probably because it was in a class of its own. It was no polished stone, faceted and crafted by dwarven hands. It came from the very rock, perfect.

Not a treasure, a gift. From the Maker to His children. A sign, one of those sought-after, rare acknowledgments that in the wide world beyond their halls, there was one who looked upon them favorably.

Thorin was right to sound annoyed, she supposed, that they had neglected it in their tales of the bounty of Erebor. Dís tried to shake off her unexpected panic. Told herself it was dread of their task. Nothing more.

But she found herself, bedding in her arms, knocking on Thorin’s door when they finally went to bed that night, early, in preparation for their departure.

Thorin answered immediately, looking down on her in surprise. Fíli and Kíli were already asleep in a little nest of blankets on the end of the bed. Dwalin was with his brother; it only seemed fitting that she spend what could be the last night of the world with hers.

“Room for one more?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.

Thorin didn’t say anything. He opened the door wider, the came to her and put an arm around her shoulders. They negotiated space for their shoulders and legs (poking the lads in the sides, but they didn’t stir and Dís envied them their peace) and lay side by side on the Mannish bed, in the Mannish dwelling. Without another word to one another they eventually drifted off to sleep, dreaming of fire. Dreaming of home.

* * *

 

They set off with a good deal more pomp than they would have wished. In fact, they wanted to leave in the dead of night and would have, if not for the fact that Bilbo would have been blind. The Master ceased his campaign of avoidance just long enough to make a flowery speech about the nobility of their question and how the Men of the Lake supported them unfailingly and he hoped they would not forget their friends.

“Friends,” Balin muttered under his breath, then quoted, “‘If I should call thee friend who useth me in such a way / How shall I know mine enemy who doth flatter and pander / And give me nothing?’”

Thorin said nothing of substance, merely thanks the Master for his hospitality and assured him and the assembled crowd - large for such an early morning - that if their quest proved successful they would have gold enough to rebuild Esgaroth ten times over.

This drew a hearty cheer from the crowd that took Dís somewhat aback; Men were impatient, she thought. Impatient to live, impatient to die and short-sighted. How strange that they should cheer the prospect of fifty-years increase of fortunes.

One among their number was not cheering.

“Listen to me! All of you, you must listen to me!” Bard burst forth from the crowd. His wife and children were nowhere to be seen, but he stood apart from the rest, shoulders set and chest heaving; he must have run all the way from his home. Breathless, he continued, “Have you forgotten what happened to Dale? Have you forgotten those who died in that firestorm?”

The crowd did not immediately give a rounding chorus of support to Bard, but their joy was somewhat curtailed. Why should his words speak in their hearts at all? Dale was but a legend to them.

The faces of the dwarves grew stone-still and inscrutable. _They_ remembered Dale. And it was to them, more than any other, that Bard spoke next.

“And for what purpose?” The Man’s hands were trembling, either from sorrow or rage, Dís could not tell and had not the sympathy of heart to guess; they were wasting time. “The blind ambition of a Mountain King, so riven by greed that he could not see beyond his own desire!”

Were it not for the quick arms of Balin and Glóin, Dís had no doubt that Dwalin would have climbed straight out of the boat they’d been given to chart the half-frozen river and made Bard answer for the insult where he stood.

Dís looked at Thorin whose expression she could read no more easily than Bard’s. The muscles of his face were held stiffly, but for all that, his eyes were curiously blank.

Whether Bard was heedless of the danger he courted with his words or he simply did not care, he pressed on, kneeling on the dock now so that his face was as close to Thorin’s as it could be without toppling into the boat along with them.

“You have no right,” he hissed through his bared teeth. _“No right_ to enter that Mountain.”

A hush fell over the crowd. The eyes of the Company were riveted on Thorin. Would he strike the Man, hard, and watch the delicate bones of his face crumble beneath his fist? Or would he, as he so often did, swallow his anger and let it burn a hole inside him to his very heart. Dís only realized she was holding her breath when she felt her lungs begin to burn.

Slowly, Thorin raised his eyes, though not his head to regard Bard with a look that was no longer blank. His expression was filled with the uttermost contempt, but when he spoke he did not bellow out his fury or spit in Bard’s face. Quietly, with as much sorrow as pride, he said, “I have the _only_ right.”

If one could call it that. For more than one-hundred years, Thorin labored and suffered under the yoke of his ‘right.’ An exiled King to a lost and scattered people. He had more dead subjects than living. What ought to have been for him a home of riches and beauty was a burned out husk, a desecrated tomb. But it was _his._ Theirs.

The dwarven race lost many of their lands, their holdings, to evil, war, and sheer bad luck. That was Thorin’s right. That was his inheritance. Dragons, death, and desolation. Would that be the song sung of the end of Durin’s line in days to come? When he met his Maker, would he thank him for the gift of his life, or would he ask why he had been given so much, only to have it all taken from him, piece by piece, dying by inches with each passing decade.

Bard spoke of rights. What did he know of rights?

The Man pulled back, despair and disgust in his eyes. “I let you into my house,” he said, disbelieving. “I aided you when you had _nothing._ And this is how you repay me? If you waken that dragon, you will destroy us all. My children - ”

He broke off, overcome. Dís thought she saw Thorin’s lips part, the smallest gesture of uncertainty, the tiniest glimpse of pain, but it was shuttered when he turned away and took up an oar.

“You might weep for your children now,” Thorin said as the others followed his example and made to cast off. “But who wept for the children of Erebor in their turn? None, but us. And we shall see this done; whatever the outcome.”

Bilbo slipped to the back of the boat as they pulled away. His chin was tilted up and he was staring at Bard in undisguised concern. The Man’s shoulders were hunched and he passed a hand over his eyes.

“Bard…” Bilbo began, but Nori gave him an elbow in the ribs to shut him up.

 _“Men,”_ the dwarf sneered and turned away from the docks, his eyes fixed straight ahead. Fíli and Kíli and Ori looked behind until Dori and Dís favored them with a sharp look apiece and they turned away reluctantly.

“His children, Mam,” Fíli whispered in his mother’s ear, but Dís shook her head and silenced him.

“Do you want me to name off the children who died in Erebor?” she whispered back, her voice harsh and rasping. “We could make you a fine catalog, but as we need to reach the Mountain ere nightfall, it’ll have to wait until we have time to make a proper recitation.”

“But…” Kíli was not as cowed as his older brother and he cut in, voice breaking a little. “But Bain and Sigrid and little Tillie - ”

“But Alfr and Heggr and Tóra,” Balin recited from memory. His voice was sharp and his expression fierce. “But Frigga and Rúna and Glóa and Sága and Herdís. But Loni and Atli and Elisíf. Do you _want_ me to go on?”

Fíli and Kíli looked cowed and Ori seemed a little frightened. “No, sir,” they chorused as one.

“Five hundred dead Men,” Balin continued and even Thorin was looking at him, taken aback. It was as rare to see Balin lose his temper as it was to see a vein of mithril in a copper mine, the only one among them who didn’t express open surprise to hear him speak so coldly was Dwalin. “Or five thousand dead Dwarves. Which is the greater tragedy?”

There was no answer to give, none that would please the lads to speak or Balin to hear, so they said nothing.

It was easy for younglings whose lives had been comparatively easy to forget that though they and their kindred were of the earth, they could share no bonds of kinship nor even many bonds of sympathy with Men. It was all well and good to trade with them, eat with them, speak with them. But the moment the whims of Men sought to degrade the place of Dwarves, all amity must cease. Such had been the way for a thousand-thousand years and there were ten-score tales of Dwarves who met their fall putting the love of would-be friends above their own cunning and better judgment.

“We’re a race apart,” Bofur mumbled, scratching the back of his neck. Dís wondered who he was talking to, since they all well knew it and tasted the consequences over and over, but she turned and found him leaning in to speak to Bilbo who was staring at them all with wonder, as if he’d never seen them before. “S’how it is.”

“I wonder that you...had me along,” the hobbit said swallowing with a little difficulty.

Dwalin snorted and, if Dís knew him at all, she was sure he was about to start in on damnable wizards and that if it’d been up to _him_ , but Thorin spoke before Dwalin had a chance to start in on a ramble.

“We had our doubts,” he acknowledged, looking down at Bilbo over his shoulder. “I more than many. But you’ve proved yourself a steadfast companion. A stalwart. Over and above the Men of the Lake.”

Their burglar did not look as pleased by the compliment as he might have, but his countenance seemed less gloomy than it was for Thorin’s words. “They - Bard and his family - did give us a place to stay,” he pointed out hesitantly.

“Aye, they did,” Dís agreed. “And I do… _like_ them. But a day’s food and rest...if it wasn’t _Erebor_...we may be indebted to them. In a small way. But we are not beholden to them at the cost of our kingdom. It’s not comparable. Do you see?”

It was obvious to her that Bilbo did not see. He fretted over the cinch that held his scabbard to his waist and was silent. Dís stared at the top of his honey-colored hair for a beat, then sighed and asked Dori to budge up so she could take a hand with the rowing for a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was FIGHTING with BALIN of all dwarves at the end of this chapter. Everyone's nerves are frayed to the breaking point. And now they have to face a dragon.


	46. Chapter 46

There she was. Rising up into the clouded sky, the Jewel of the East. The Lonely Mountain. Erebor.

As Dís stepped out of the boat and onto dry land, the unsteadiness of her legs had nothing to do with leaving the water.

 _I remember this place,_ she thought, heart beating fast. Her head was swimming and despite the danger lurking just feet in front of them, she felt elation.

There was the long road to Dale, cobbles smashed and packed dirt overgrown with grass and weeds. The forest stretched out around them, the trees more densely packed than they had been when she was a child. Yet she had eyes only for the great Mountain before her. Home. Home at last.

All of the Company stood and stared. The sun had reached its apex during their journey and was ever dropping lower to the horizon, but they stopped anyway. Weathered were the warrior guardians that kept watch all around and there were still black scorch marks around the Gate. But despite it all, she was still proud. Still beautiful.

They stood so long, Bilbo seemed to think they’d lost their way. “Erm. I think it’s this way,” he said, plucking Thorin’s sleeve uncomfortably, gesturing to a pathway, cleverly cut in the guardian warrior’s armor.

Thorin’s eyes misted over and he tilted his head back up and up to stare at the figure’s helmed and shadowed face. The figure was Thrór and had been carved over three-hundred years ago.

A memory glimmered in Dís’s mind. She’d been up high - carried? No, on shoulders. Her grandfather’s for she remembered gripping his silver braids while he patted her knee.

 _Not a bad likeness, eh?_ he remarked, wryly. Why was he holding her? What had they been doing outside? Had she been frightened? He seemed to think she needed reassurance. _So, you see, there’s naught to fret over, lass. Even if you leave home, just know there’s always a pair of eyes looking out for you._

“You have keen eyes, Master Burglar,” Thorin said. His voice was gruff and when he blinked again, the tears were gone. Perhaps Dís had just imagined them.

It was back onto Dori’s back for their burglar as they made their ascent. Occasionally one of their number paused, fingers digging into the rock. They did not fear falling, but they needed to reassure themselves that this was real, they were really here. Even Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur stopped occasionally, running their hands over the living stone in reverence.

 **“Beautiful,”** Dís heard Bifur whisper. **“She is beautiful.”**

No one spoke, not even the lads. Fíli and Kíli scrambled up the tall stone steps like sprightly monkeys, but their manner was subdued. For the Mountain was beautiful. And the desecration of her halls by the Worm was so obscene it did not bear speaking on.

They all thought, Dís was sure, of Mt. Gundabad. Father Durin’s waking place, overtaken and overrun with Orcish filth. So many strongholds had fallen, so many of their people slain. And always, they were given the blame, even from their own kind.

The quest was theirs. The grudge, as Dáin would have it, theirs. It made Dís love Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur all the more. Risking life and limb for a Mountain they had never seen, whose song did not resound in their chests.

And the boys. Those brave boys. Her brave boys.

If her eyes stung, she told herself it was only the wind.

The sun was dipping down to the horizon, shining out over the great frozen waterway when they reached the place upon the rock where the hidden door lay, untouched, for two-hundred years.

“By the grey stone,” Thorin recited. He looked at the map, but the parchment was blank as it had been that long-ago night in Bag End. “Where the thrush knocks.”

All was silence. It seemed that every member of the Company held their breaths as the blood-red sun slipped lower and lower. Still the keyhole did not reveal itself.

“Does it…” Bilbo whispered, uneasily into the tense quiet. “How does it work?”

The Company shifted before the rock face, exchanging looks amongst themselves. For a moment, it appeared that everyone was going to pretend they hadn’t heard him, until Thorin, of all dwarves replied.

“The keyhole is made to be invisible,” he said. His fingers restlessly clasped the key hung around his neck. The weight was a comfort in his hand, carved in Erebor, a remnant of the Mountain, the only one they could claim aside from the map and their own weary bodies. “Unless the light hits it in the right way. The door itself will always be invisible when closed.”

“Ah,” Bilbo nodded as though he understood. “Secrecy.”

“Safety,” Dwalin replied sternly. He looked at the horizon and the door anxiously. The day became darker and darker, orange light giving way to silvery moonlight. Then, indistinct and shimmering at first, the keyhole appeared, a diamond-shaped hole in the rock. Even made visible, it might have been taken for a chip in the stone, but canny dwarven eyes picked out the hard, perfect edges carved by a chisel.

They held their breath, all of them, as Thorin (with hands that shook only a little) placed the key into the lock. Fíli pressed himself closer to his mother’s side and Kíli did one better, slipping his hand in hers. Dís squeezed his fingers, probably to the point of pain when the stone door inched open on hinges that had not been used for hundreds of years.

There was no great gust of musty air, no stale scent of a place that was shut-up and slumbering. Erebor was too well-built for that. Even so, as Thorin made those first tentative steps, not sparing a look back for any of them, proceeding like a sleepwalker, his manner had all the reverence of one entering a tomb.

Thorin was the first to enter. Dís could not take her eyes from him. The straight line of his shoulders slumped. A hand went to his mouth, but then hovered aloft before he braced himself with a press of searching fingers against smooth steady steady stone. He exhaled and began to breathe properly for the first time since he was a sixty-eight year old youngling choking on grief and smoke.

“I know these walls,” he said, in a faint whisper. The only light came from the pale moon rising over the horizon, but dwarven eyes were suited to darkness. They saw the carved marble, with veins of gold running throughout, shining faintly, so faintly. Like the thrumming of a heartbeat. “These halls. This stone.”

They were in the armory. The room was still and silent as the grave. Huge statues flanked the rooms, depicting their greatest warriors of days old and new, resplendent in arms and armor. They stood watch even now, their sightless eyes peering down at the company from under their helms or beneath chiseled braids. Unmatched craftsmanship, depicting the most valiant members of their race.

The statue nearest them wore the armor of Thrór’s King’s Guard. Ever scar upon his noble brow was painstakingly recreated. These were not the uniform busts Men favored, with regular, pristine features. These were intricate depictions of their honored soldiers, as they were in life. They were so life-like, you could recognize them on sight. And all but the youngest among them recognized Thrór’s Captain of the Guard, Fundin Farinul.

“Balin,” Thorin’s voice broke and he reached out behind him as if to catch himself falling. Balin took his hand, but he looked as unsteady as Thorin himself. “Do you remember?”

The torches were unlit, the room was in shambles, all the fine weapons of their people, heirlooms, and artifacts of war, strewn about the floor like rubbish. Here a fine-wrought shield, undented despite decade of use. There an exquisitely etched axe, the handle made of ivory from the tusks of an oliphaunt. All tossed aside as if they were nothing at all.

“Halls filled with golden light…” Thorin’s voice was quavering and he trailed off, clearing his throat uncomfortably.

Balin did not sound any better as he choked out, “I remember.”

Dís didn’t realize she was shaking until she felt arms come around to steady her and a warm expanse of chest at her back. Dwalin was behind her, Fíli and Kíli had wandered off a bit, eyes wide, taking it all in.

“Alright?” he muttered into her ear.

Dís nodded, throat tight. “I’m alright,” she whispered. “Just don’t let me go. For a bit.”

“Never,” he replied immediately.

She looked around at the faces of the Company. Dori was shielding his eyes - crying, she realized and she turned her head away immediately, feeling she had no right to watch his grief...or was it relief? She felt like she was mourning their lost all over again even as she stood in the home she’d left so long ago and had half forgotten. Nori was hovering by his older brother. Hesitantly, he lay a hand on Dori’s shoulder and seemed as surprised as she was when Dori took it, rather than shaking it off.

Ori stepped forward, between Fíli and Kíli, their faces alive with wonder. How did they feel? Like coming home? She hoped it was that simple for them, but she suspected that it was not.

Óin swore. She heard him and she felt better for it, voicing an obscenity into the gloom dispelled some of the reverence. Dís turned and saw him pass a hand over his face. Glóin didn’t even pretend to be unaffected, he was weeping openly, but quietly. She wanted to turn her head into Dwalin’s chest and do the same, but decades of consciously holding her tears in could not be undone in a moment. She never cried where her brother could see her and she wasn’t about to start now.

Their Broadbeam companions held back with Bilbo. Their hobbit was squinting into the darkness, trying to make out exactly what it was that affected them all so, but even if he could see everything, he still wouldn’t understand. To be in one’s place, to be surrounded by the stones that provided succor for your ancestors was a solace only a dwarf could know.

Balin tried to find his voice again. “Thorin - ” he began, but was cut off when Kíli shuffling forward to take in more of the armory made a sword slide from its precarious place, leaning against the statue of Balin and Dwalin’s father, to land upon the floor. The sound echoed in the cavernous room.

“Careful,” Thorin said gruffly, breaking away from Balin to guide Kíli back to them by the elbow. “She’s not ours yet.”

And so she was not. There was a dragon, deep in the rock. Whether it lived or not they could not know.

Fourteen pairs of eyes settled on Bilbo. Little Bilbo, looking smaller still in his borrowed clothes. Their stalwart hobbit who was contracted to them to wander into the unknow. He had more than proved his mettle, but nothing they had yet faced could have prepared him for his task.

Dís felt cold all over, despite Dwalin’s warmth. _He signed the contract,_ she reminded herself. _He knew what he was doing._

But had he? Had any of them? When they departed the Blue Mountains, when they supped at a halfling’s table in a cozy countryside, did they have any idea what they were chancing?

Dís caught sight of her brother’s face. His eyes were shadowed and his jaw was set. He looked tired, sorrowful, and determined despite it all. If any of them had known what they were to face, it was Thorin, who had suffered under the burden of this duty for most of his life. And so here it would end, one way or another.

“You must,” he began, but his voice was so faint he had to clear his throat and begin again. “You must venture forth alone, Master Baggins. We can go no farther without...risking the drake’s wrath, if it lives.”

“What about Gandalf?” Bilbo asked, suddenly, nervous.

It was the wrong question. A vein worked in Thorin’s neck and he gritted out, “If the wizard meant to aid us, do you not think he would be here now? That he would not have abandoned us to our enemies and left us to rot in an Elven forest?”

Bilbo swallowed thickly, but said nothing. His pale blue eyes darted to the open door, as if expecting the wizard to appear at the last moment, as he had done so many times during their journey. But Gandalf did not come.

Bofur reached out a hand to clasp Bilbo’s shoulders, but the halfling stepped away from him, squaring his shoulders and drawing himself up.

“Very well,” he said, chin held high. “What shall I do?”

“The drake will likely be in the treasurehouse,” Balin replied. “Not far from here - I’ll show you the way, go as far as I can with you.”

“I should - ” Thorin began, but Balin interrupted him.

“I’m glad to do it, if it’s all the same to you,” he said pleasantly, but with the barest edge of steel to his voice. “If he is dead, thank the Maker for minor miracles. If he sleeps, your task will be much more delicate and dangerous. We need you to retrieve a stone.”

“A stone?” Bilbo asked, looking around at the carven statues and gilded walls. “Just one?”

“Aye,” Balin nodded. “Just the one. The only one that matters - the Arkenstone.”

“Why - ”

Thorin shook his head, effectively cutting off Bilbo’s reply.

“Just find the stone, Bilbo,” he said. “Bring it to me. You are our burglar and this is all that we require of you. That is why you are here.”

With the gem in Thorin’s possession, it would prove that Smaug was weakened by time and age and sloth. If they had the Heart of the Mountain, perhaps the others of their race would see that this was no second Moria. This was no fruitless death-march for glory before they were new-Made in the Halls of their Maker. Erebor could be won. The line of Durin would not be so easily defeated.

“What if…” Bilbo licked his lips and cleared his throat. “What if the dragon isn’t...erm...sleeping?”

Thorin’s eyes, terribly troubled, answered even before he opened his mouth to speak, “If this is to end in fire, then we shall all burn together.”

Bilbo paused, a long pause before he let out a breath and nodded silently. Balin beckoned him on and the two of them picked their way across the debris before they disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

 

“He’s been gone a long time,” Bofur said, chewing his fingernails to the quick. “What’s that mean, then?”

“I don’t know,” Thorin said. They were sitting just inside the doorway, all reluctant to set foot outside the Mountain now that they’d entered it at last.

“Couldn’t one of us have gone with him?” Kíli whispered in Dís’s ear. His mother shook her head.

“You caused a commotion two steps inside the doorway, love,” she reminded him. “Bilbo’s quiet as a mouse. If there’s a chance of not waking the beast, he’s the only one who has it.”

“I can’t _stand_ this,” Fíli grunted, his jaw clenched tightly. He kept sheathing and unsheathing the knives Bilbo saved for him from Thranduil’s dungeon, but the gesture only served to make him more agitated. “Waiting. What if the worm’s dead after all?”

“If it was dead, Bilbo would’ve come back by now,” Dori answered shortly. “Don’t you think he would?”

“So, he’s alive, then?” Ori asked, any color that might have been in his cheeks fading to ghostly white. “What if he’s _awake?”_

“Believe me, laddie, if that dragon wakens,” Balin said darkly. “We’ll know it.”

Not ten minutes later, they had their answer. The earth beneath them shuddered and trembled and every last dwarf looked at one another, their faces a momentary rictus of horror, no matter how quickly they tried to put on a stony cover. The dragon was most definitely alive. And it was awake from its sixty-year slumber.

“What now?” Dís asked, whispering absurdly, as if the thing could hear them. And what did that matter? He had to know they were there, had to know Bilbo could not have come alone...oh, _Bilbo._ Panic rose like bile in her throat, her breath was coming in short, quick swallows of air. What had they led him to?

Thorin was on his feet, but he did not seem to know what to do. He looked at Balin and then down the dark hall Bilbo had disappeared into. If they had been Men, they would have run. How could fourteen succeed where others had failed.

“We could...we could make our way to the battlements,” Thorin said, not looking at anyone. “After such a long time asleep...he’ll want to hunt.”

“And do what when we get there?” Nori asked, flippantly, but Dís saw the fear in his eyes. “Jump off? Because a long drop is better than a quick fry?”

“There are weapons there - windlances, cannons, even,” Thorin said, thinking quickly. “Gather up all the pikes, arrows, and lances you can find - ”

“But what’ll that _do_ against dragonscales?” Nori demanded. “They’re tougher than Blacklock steel!”

“Their _hides_ are stronger than iron, aye,” Balin said quickly, turning a steely eye on Nori as the others hurried to find whatever projectiles, crossbows and pikes they could. “But their underbellies are soft.”

“Pierce the heart,” Dwalin added in the flat, brisk voice he affected during wartime, “kill the beast.”

“But more than a century laying upon a hoard such as that…” Gloin winced to think of it. “He’ll have made himself a fine coat.”

“What about Bilbo?” Bofur asked, shouldering a crossbow.

“Just so,” Dwalin agreed with Glóin. “But gold is soft, remember? A spike or a pike could be driven into his chest, if you made an effort.”

“Aye,” Thorin smiled, a wicked baring of his teeth before he spoke again. “A fitting end, eh? The gold-pierced heart.”

“What about Bilbo?” Bofur was shouting.

The Company looked back at him, armed and armored as well as they could be for the coming conflict. No one moved. No one spoke.

“We’ve a better chance of striking him down if he’s in the air,” Thorin replied, as if he hadn’t heard. “There’s not room enough to move or shoot, we’ve suffered that before - ”

“We’re not just _leaving_ him?” Bofur asked, incredulously. “We can’t! He’s one o’us, eh? _Eh?”_

“Bofur…” Bombur started to stay uneasily, but his brother cut him off.

“We can’t!” Bofur insisted. “I know he might be...but we don’t _know_ do we? What if he needs help?”

“I can’t sacrifice this quest for the halfling’s sake!” Thorin snapped.

Dís stiffened. She knew there was every chance that Bilbo might not survive. That his chances were no better than any of theirs...and, if shew as honest with herself, his chances were worse than theirs. But to hear her brother admit that he would leave him for dead in so final a way made her guts twist uncomfortably.

“He’s lucky, isn’t he?” Fíli spoke up. His eyes were wary, but he went on more boldly when Thorin didn’t turn on him. “Bilbo, he’s quick and clever and...if anyone could sneak by a dragon, I’m sure he could.”

Thorin stared at them all, as if trying to read the proper course in their faces. Finally his roaming eyes stopped on Balin who said, “There might be a chance he lives.”

“Fine,” Thorin said, the muscles in his arm tensing around Deathless’s hilt. “Fine. _I’ll_ go - ”

“Not alone!” Dwalin thundered.

“Alone!” Thorin countered with a shout. “And that’s an _command_. None of you are to follow me, if I don’t return _with_ Bilbo in ten minutes time, arm the battlements and stand against the drake!”

Without a backward look or a work to any of them, Thorin ran down the hall.

It wasn’t ten seconds later before Nori said, “Who’ll be the first of us to commit treason?”

“Can’t have our hands if we’re dead,” Dís said immediately, pike in hand. “Or if he’s...the rest of you stay here, I’m going after him, treason or no.”

“Not treason,” Balin countered, raising his mace and shouldering a quiver of arrows. “Insubordination. And I’ll go.”

“Hang it, we’re all going,” Dwalin was bristling with so many weapons they clanged together as he ran down the hall.

Indeed they were. They would face the dragon’s wrath together, as Thorin said, or not at all.

The corridors were eerily quiet and dark. Despite the certainty of danger, it seemed that the whole place was still and uninhabited as the grave. Dís did not know where she was going, she relied on Balin and Dwalin’s memories and followed them, half a pace behind. Her sons followed hot on her heels and she tried to ignore the sickened feeling in her guts that fairly screamed at her to turn around and look at them, look _now_ before it was too late.

But she could not turn back. She might have run in the other direction if she looked.

A sound like thunder. A roar that had echoed in her dreams for years, half-forgotten made Dís freeze in her tracks, she would have stopped if Dwalin hadn’t tugged her to safety behind a pillar. Flame. Hotter than anything she’d ever encountered, spewed around them. When she opened her eyes again she saw Bilbo running toward her with Thorin just behind him.

“Did you find it?” she shouted at Bilbo as he passed. The halfling turned to look at her, but made no response because there was a horrible roaring shout from nearby and they were on the run again.

It was just as Thorin said. The corridors were too tight to get a decent shot off, even if they could summon the strength to drive an arrow or a spear through the drake’s heart, they were too busy running and taking cover, trying to stay alive.

“The western Guard room!” she heard someone shout, not that it made a difference to her, she did not remember where the western Guard room _was_ \- on impulse, seeing a blur of yellow and black at her elbows, she grabbed her sons and pushed them ahead of her so she could keep one eye on each of them as they followed Thorin.

Kíli stumbled and Dís practically lifted him off his feet as she dragged him along beside her. Corridor after corridor they ran, pursued by fire and vicious taunts and the sound of coins falling to the floor like drops of rain.

“Where are we going?” she yelled when she had breath to shout.

“Might be a way out!” Glóin panted, urging her on. “This way!”

They flew into a doorway, slamming the great slab of stone shut behind them. Safe for now. Dís turned round, intent on finding the exit and running - but the sight that greeted her eyes sent her crashing to the floor as her legs gave out.

Dwarves. Hundreds of them. A twisted pile of cloth and flesh. The bodies of their kind were slow to rot and the faces on them were still recognizable, contorted and swollen. They must have suffocated.

Fíli gasped and clutched his mother’s arm, turning his face away. Dís followed his line of vision and saw what had so horrified him; a dwarrowdam, a guardswoman, in armor. Her hair might have been golden at one time, but now it was brittle and colorless. The face, though. She looked just like Hervor.

Frantic, she turned to be sure that Glóin hadn’t seen, he would break down, but he was taking in the whole macabre image, his eyes not settling on any one face.

“S’hands,” Dwalin swore, closing his eyes briefly. No one could fault him for looking away.

It was mostly dwarrowdams and children. Dís never took her life for granted, but here in this room, she saw how easily she could have become one of the fallen. They’d been in their rooms. She and her mother. Reading a book of tales when the walls shook and the alarms sounded and all around her was smoke and falling rubble and her mother’s arms. It could have been her in this room. It could have been them.

Arms again, Thorin’s lifting her to her feet, his head pressed against her brow with all the fervency in the world.

“We’re not going to die like this,” he said with such conviction that Dís could almost believed him. “Not...cowering in the dark, fighting for breath. They did not deserve such an end - we _will_ have our revenge.”

Revenge. _Yes._ Revenge.

To the forges they went, to the great water-wheels and the beast followed, shrieking after them in that awful voice, **_“Thief! Thief! Run! Run fast! It did not save your kin!”_**

Dís had not time for thoughts now. The only thing that filled her mind was the dream of vengeance. If they were to die, they would take the beast with them. And so perish here, at home. If they could not reclaim the Mountain for themselves, let them reclaim it for their people and clear it of the monster that had stolen it from them.

Water. Fire. A golden idol. And in the end, it was all for naught.

The drake burst free of the Mountain like an exploding star.

**_“Revenge? Revenge? I will show you revenge!”_ **

To the battlements they went, but they were too late. Far too late.

Dís caught her breath and looked around at her companions, friends, and family. Alive, all of them were alive and she ought to count it a miracle, but to know what they had unleashed upon the Men of the Lake, all Bard’s words come to pass, made her sick at heart.

“Why would he do that?” Dori demanded, shouting into the night. “Why let us live? After _that_ , why leave?”

“The Lake-Men,” Bilbo shuddered with his whole body and stumbled forward, catching himself on the stone wall. “He - he… _Barrel-rider!_ How could I have been so thoughtless? He means to set fire to Lake-town! He means for us to watch it burn! Fourteen dead dwarves or five-hundred dead Men! Oh, he’s wicked, wicked! And clever.”

In a sudden hysterical fury, Bilbo rounded on them all, hands gripping his matted curls in a frenzy. “Which is the greater tragedy, then? Which is it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the paltry glimpses of the dragon, but Dís was a little more worried about not dying than she was getting an eyeful of the beast. Erred on the side of 'less is more,' as is a theme with me for fight scenes. You all have NO IDEA how close I came to having Thorin's plan work, but it would mess up the fallout from Smaug's rampage and I have PLANS for that.


	47. Chapter 47

The sky was dark as pitch all night, there was no moon and the only pinpricks of light came from distant stars. Lake-town was too far to see from the parapets and if it burned, they did not know. The Company did not lay their guard down for a moment. On the contrary, the set about oiling the old windlances and bows, making ready for the return of the drake, which they were sure would be imminent. Once, they thought they heard something in the distance, a great crash, but it might have been thunder for the creature never reappeared.

“Best get out of the way,” Bofur remarked uneasily to Bilbo, taking in his bare feet and tattered coat. “Or else find yourself some armor.”

Bilbo wrapped his arms around his middle and laughed bitterly, a strange miserable sound to come from their hobbit’s round face. But his cheeks had lost a good deal of their pleasant fat and giving him a haunted expression. 

“Would it matter?” he asked. “Is dwarf armor flame-proof?”

“Nevertheless,” Thorin said. “You ought to try to find something suitable. I could take you to the armory - ”

“I’ll go myself - thank you,” Bilbo replied stiffly. He moved away from Thorin with strange, jerky motions. He shoved his hands into his pockets first, then pulled them out as if he’d touched something hot. Turning away from them all, he folded his arms over his chest. Thorin paused in his work with the weaponry, staring after the hobbit was a frown twisting his mouth and a furrow between his eyebrows.

“Have you thought on what he said?” Balin asked, coming to stand beside Thorin. The wind played havoc with his short-cut hair, sending it flying all around his head. “On tragedies.”

Thorin looked down at Balin, lips parting. He looked bereft, utterly at a loss. He looked as he had done that first night in Bag End when Balin told him their life in the Blue Mountains was enough. That this Quest was unnecessary.

As he had done so many months ago, Thorin took a breath and the uncertainty vanished. Rather than passion in his voice and fire in his eyes, now Balin only saw resignation.

“If we are well fortified against the Worm’s return, if we slay him now and reclaim Erebor, I will consider this Quest a success,” Thorin said through gritted teeth. He looked around, gaze settling on every member of the Company, hard at work under his command, preparing for what was sure to be a last stand. Only when Fíli and Kíli came into his line of sight did he close his eyes and turn away. “There are a thousand dwarves across the continent who could return, it must be victory enough.”

Balin grasped Thorin’s elbow and looked up beseechingly into his face.“But no one to populate Dale? No one to rebuild Esgaroth?”

Thorin said nothing.

“A thousand Dwarves is well and good, but who should the Mountain trade with if the surrounding cities and towns are deserted?”

Fíli, hovering nearby, stood by Balin, hands twitching at his side as if he too wished to take hold of his uncle, but thought better of it. “Can’t we help them? Can’t we _do_ something?”

“What shall we do?” Thorin shook Balin off and rounded on Fíli, but there was no heat in his voice, no anger. His inquiry seemed almost genuine and his voice was tight. “Run toward death or plant our heels in and face it here? I won’t die on the roadways - _I will not._ At least here there is a _chance…”_

Thorin’s eyes scanned the horizon for a burst of dragonfire in the sky, the rise of smoke or a dark shape resolving itself into a terrible looming creature coming toward them, but he saw nothing save encroaching clouds. 

Dís lay a hand on Fíli’s shoulder and steered him away from his uncle. “Go on,” she advised him. “Go with your brother and find Bilbo some suitable armor - off with you, now.”

Fíli again looked fit to argue, but Kíli took his hand and silently drew him away. Dís stood by Thorin and the two of them gazed out over the horizon as the others retreated as far as they could away. 

“I’d rather die at home,” he said so quietly only she could hear.

“I know,” she replied, reaching out and taking his hand in hers. “I know.”

They’d known that death could very well reach them at the end of this journey. Even if they never spoke of the chance aloud, they knew they might now meet the fate they escaped over a century ago. Some might be resigned. Others might rage against it. Thorin...Dís bit her lip and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. His brow was furrowed, his lips thin, but in his eyes she saw something that frightened her, had _always_ frightened her since she’d been a little girl and watched her brothers suit up for war.

A part of her mind, a part that she always tried to ignore, knew that Thorin had not feared death since he was a boy. That sometimes, he welcomed the idea. In his eyes now, amid the tension and the uncertainty, she saw another emotion that shook her to the core: relief. 

Yet they stood by and the dragon never returned, not throughout the night, not at dawn and not as the sun burned hot overhead, half blinding them to the roadway below.

“Something’s not right,” Dwalin muttered darkly. “Is that Worm taunting us?”

“I don’t see why,” Dori huffed. “We won’t be taken unaware again, that’s for certain.”

“Why hasn’t he _come_ , then?” Nori asked, pitching a stone over the side of the Mountain, for lack of better occupation. “I can’t stand waiting!”

There was a momentary silence after, as if everyone was waiting for Dori to jump in with some jibe or snipe at his brother, but there was none forthcoming. No one seemed to know what to say, until Fíli and Kíli returned, without their hobbit.

“We couldn’t find him,” Kíli said, a little out of breath. “We didn’t want to stay away too long.”

“So he’s run off,” Glóin decided, gloomily. 

“Or hidden himself away somewhere,” Fíli said. “I wonder that he didn’t get turn around, it’s a maze in there.”

Thorin brought a hand to his brow, visibly distressed. That his nephews, his _heirs_ should find their homeland a labyrinth was understandable, but it chafed nevertheless. The awful waiting, the tension, the near certainty of disaster was working on his very last nerve. It was as Nori said, the waiting was unbearable. 

“Stay here now,” Dís said, turning away from Thorin to take both of their arms and urge them to stand on either side of her. “Keep watch.”

As the sun set on their first day of watchful waiting, the dwarves began to think that Smaug might not be coming back at all. Bilbo came back after a while, a shadow amongst them. It was clear he’d not found his way to the armory for he wore only his tattered blue coat, without a shred of metal on his person, save Sting. 

“Is it…” he broke a long silence and cleared his throat. “Could he...be...dead? Could the Men of the Lake have done it?”

“Impossible,” Thorin growled before anyone else had the chance to reply. “What could five-hundred Men accomplish that five-thousand Dwarves could not?”

No one wanted to argue with him. His eyes were dark and shadowed and his jaw was clenched. But Balin ventured, after a short silence, “They were prepared.”

“With what?” Thorin demanded. “Fishing hooks? The best of our warriors _died_ that day, Balin. I saw…”

He visibly drew himself up; for all Thorin’s bulk, he seemed like a marionette gone to ruin at the joinings, as if he’d fall apart any moment. “If dwarven might could not defeat that monster, I have little faith in the feeble arms of Men.”

“Oh!” Bilbo bellowed, throwing his hands in the air. “You don’t have faith in anything, as near as I can see!”

Thorin rounded on the halfling in a rage. “And why should I? What should give me cause to hope? What? _Tell me_ , if you know so much. _You_ who hadn’t ventured a toe out of your damned back garden before we came calling!”

“That might be so,” Bilbo countered, tilting his chin up to stare Thorin in the eye. “But I’ve seen much of the world in these paths months and...I am not the same hobbit that I was. Yet _you_ are the same dwarf who stomped into my dining room and called me a grocer!”

“Aye,” Dwalin snarled, getting between Thorin and Bilbo, bending low so he as eye-to-eye with the halfling. “The same dwarf who saw his home and people _burn_ , not once, but _twice._ Shall I take you back to the Western Guard Room? Do you want to count the corpses? Should I tell you their names? Until you can sing a mourning-song for all our dead, until you’ve tasted the _ashes_ of your father on your tongue, don’t you tell me what you’ve damned well _seen.”_

That shut Bilbo up, though he cast an unhappy look at them all and turned away again, hands fiddling once more in the pockets of his coat. No one went forward to lay a consoling hand on his arm, Balin did not take him aside to explain Thorin’s anger or Dwalin’s outburst. Even the youngest among them turned away from the hobbit, their eyes scanning the horizon anxiously. And so Bilbo went away from them all, back into the darkness within the Mountain. 

When they did see movement on the horizon, it was not the beast, nor anything like it, a black body with great flapping wings. In the hazy light of dawn, Kíli’s sharp eyes picked out a line of movement - a line of _Men,_ helmed and armed approaching the Mountain like soldiers on campaign. 

“Come away,” Thorin said at once, pulling Kíli away from the wall. 

The dwarves retreated back into the shadows. None knew what this meant - a party of Men approaching the Mountain? Was Bilbo right after all? Was the beast well and truly dead? _How?_

But stronger than their curiosity was their suspicion. _How_ indeed?

“What are you doing?” Bilbo asked as Bofur pulled him away, out of the light. “Aren’t you going to hail them?”

“Elves,” Kíli spat the words just as loathingly as his uncle had in the troll cave. “There were _Elves_ with them, I saw their helms!”

Bilbo did not seem to understand, for he made to go back out onto the balcony, but Dís stuck her arm straight out and squinted down over the balustrade before she too retreated behind the wall. 

“Is this a siege?” Ori asked, a note of panic in his voice. 

“Hush!” Thorin ordered him. “Be silent! Listen!”

There were cries carried to them on the wind. Something like battle cries, but not nearly so uniform, not nearly so heartening. These were not cries to boost morale - this was a call for vengeance. 

“Cursed be the corpses of the Dwarves!” they heard. And, “Gold for blood!”

“They’re not here to lay siege to us,” Thorin snarled, breaking free of the rest of the group to stand behind the battlements. “They mean to rob our grave.”

A small group of Men, flanked by fair-haired Elves of the Woodland realm, approached on horseback, closer than the others. They must have been nearly two-thousand strong, this unlikely allegiance of Men and Elves. Some were outfitted better in the arms of war than others, but their steel and bows left no doubt in Thorin’s mind that they came to do them harm.

With a crossbow in his hand, rendered useful again through hours of careful tending, Thorin stood, half-shielded behind the crenelation and shouted down, “Who are you? That come as if in war to the gates of the Mountain and what do you desire?”

“Is he going to _shoot_ them?” Bilbo asked Dís in alarm. “Is Bard with them? The Master?”

With narrowed eyes she glared at him and shushed him. “Be quiet!” she ordered, straining to listen to the Men’s reply.

But there was nothing to hear. A King addressed them from the walls of his kingdom and they said not a word in return. They merely stared up at him. Beneath their helms, at such a distance, Thorin knew not what expression passed over their faces. Disappointment, perhaps? Wrath? But whatever they felt, they merely turned away and retreated to join the rest of their brethren in arms, many yards away from the Gate.

Thorin rejoined his Company, face red, teeth grinding together. 

“What’s happening?” Bilbo asked, struggling desperately against Dís’s restraining arm, but unable to move. “Why won’t you talk to them?”

_“They_ won’t have words with me,” Thorin grunted. “Turn the canons and arms away from the sky - our enemy has changed.”

Half the faces in the shadows paled while the other half mere looked more resolute.

“Have they come to wage war?” Fíli asked, incredulously. “Why have the Elves come?”

“For the same reason Men and Elves have _always_ come to Erebor - they want our gold,” Thorin replied savagely, hands clenching into fists. “They were ready to step over our corpses and those of our kinfolk to get it. _Monsters.”_

“Defilers,” Balin echoed and Bilbo strained again, trying to see though Dís would not let him pass. 

“Did you see Bard?” he asked again.

“I saw Men,” Thorin replied shortly, retreating indoors as Dori, Nori, Balin, Glóin and Dwalin strode forward to realign the canons and other weapons on the wall toward a lower target. 

“But surely if _Bard_ was among them, he would talk to you!”

Thorin had just about enough of the hobbit’s prating. “No one _spoke_ to me,” he thundered. “They approached and turned their faces away - ”

“They’re not retreating,” Nori reported, running back inside. “Making camp, looks like. Thieving _bastards._ I’d lay good money down they wanted to force their way in and make away with all the Mountain’s treasures.”

“But you don’t _know_ , if you haven’t spoken to them!” Bilbo howled. Dís’s arm went tense all at once and it was all she could do not to strike him. 

“They let their blades speak _for_ them,” she said, slowly, deliberately, as if Bilbo was being stupid on purpose. “They come here, armed and baying for our blood and you think that talking’s the solution?”

“It’s got to be better than firing on them!” the hobbit implored.

“Who’s firing?” Nori asked him, folding his arms and raising his eyebrows. “Did I miss an order?”

“No,” Thorin said firmly. “No fire. No arrows. But they should know we will _not_ suffer ourselves to be overtaken without drawing blood.”

Thorin turned to them and addressed them like a king. “Back inside the Mountain. To the treasurehouse. Collect any arms we might have need of, but _all_ of you are charged with finding the Arkenstone. Fíli!”

His nephew stood forward, shoulders square and at attention, even if his eyes were wide with worry. “Aye, sir?”

“Go to the aviary - Balin will show you the way,” he ordered. “Fetch a raven. I’m writing to Dáin.”

Dwalin made a discontented noise as he rejoined their party. “You think he’ll come?”

Thorin nodded gravely, “Dáin might be fire-shy, but he’s never shirked from battle. He will come.”

The dwarves left the hobbit standing, half in darkness, half in light, as they rushed toward the throne room to obey Thorin’s orders. All save Fíli and Balin, who went in another direction. It was to them that Bilbo rushed, grabbing their arms, pleading with them. 

“Battle! Have you all lost your senses! Balin - ”

The dwarf, who Bilbo always found so kindly and sensible, so...so _fatherly_ almost, so easily understood by a hobbit, looked at him with remote blue eyes and a hard expression. He looked like Thorin and Bilbo shrank back, alarmed.

“It’s not to be bourne,” he said shortly.

“But we don’t know what they want!” 

“We do,” Balin countered darkly. “They came to these Gates hoping to take the wealth of our people to _plunder_ her riches. It is _not_ to be bourne.”

Fíli hesitated and Bilbo tried him next, but the young dwarf only plucked the halfling’s fingers off his arm gently. “I’ve made a vow,” he said simply. “To defend Erebor with my life and my sword arm, if there’s cause.”

“But you’ve never even _been_ here before,” Bilbo cried, frustrated to tears.

“That doesn’t matter,” Fíli replied. “This is my home. I hear it.”

And he left him then, alone in the middle of the cold corridor. When Bilbo again saw the Company, they were digging around in gold like ants scrambling over one another over the remains of a jelly tart dropped in the road. 

All of them, the same determined stares, the same single-minded concentration as they sifted through piles of treasure. Were these the same companions who drank with him and played silly games? Were these the same friends of the roadway who showered him with rough affection? Bofur was digging through coins, sunk in knee-deep, lifting brightly glittering stones with a reverent expression.

Dís was like someone caught in a frenzy, her broad hands and thick arms working through the treasure like a plowman frantically digging out a rock, trying to get a day’s work in before he lost the light - but torches burned all around and her digging would not churn up good earth.

“Have you come to help?” Thorin’s voice behind him made him startle. There was a fine sheen of sweat on his brow and his hands were shaking a little. “If you find the Arkenstone bring it _directly_ to me, do you understand?”

Bilbo must have hesitated too long because Thorin barked, “Do you?”

The halfling squeaked and jumped back, bobbing his head nervously. Thorin left him then and Bilbo’s hands twisted deep in his pockets. He looked at the terrible transformation that had overtaken his friends, transfixed them, _changed_ them and he wondered what on earth he was meant to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think we can all hear the ominous music in the distance, can't we? Is it gold-madness? Or is it something else...


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** This chapter is rated **PG-13** for **language.**

Hands were bruised, knuckles were bloody, everyone was absolutely _exhausted_ and still the Arkenstone would not be found. 

Some distant part of Dís’s mind, still capable of logical thought, reminded her that they had only combed through a tiny bit of the total treasury. This was _all_ the wealth of the mountain, the mint, individual dwarves’ private possessions, nevermind what the beast must have smuggled from Dale. It would take years before it could be properly inventoried. Years before the stone turned up.

But they did not have years. If Thorin’s claim to the throne was to be lauded as legitimate and their Quest fulfilled, they needed the Arkenstone. It was all well and good for Dáin, their own cousin, to send an army. Their hosts in the Blue Mountains might support them from afar, but they were half a year’s journey away. The nearest Clans who might be summoned to help if the Men and Elves made war would not budge from their halls unless they had a sign from the Maker Himself that Thorin and the Company were favored in His sight. 

Everyone was on edge, snapping at each other, plodding through the endless coins and brightly glinting stones with grey faces and ringed, sleepless eyes. 

Balin let out a wordless cry hours before that made the rest of them look up, hopeful, but he shook his head and said, “It’s nothing,” but it certainly got his attention. He spent the next ten minutes with his back half turned away from them, no longer searching, but untangling a web of gold chains and rubies from a gilded helm, laid in with jasper. 

She would have asked him about it, the question was burning on the tip of her tongue, but she was too tired and too busy sifting herself to give voice to it. If she stopped she was worried she might cease working altogether and just lie down and sleep.

The lads looked utterly done in. Fíli and Kíli were listlessly tossing diamonds about, picking through with weary fingers. Dori ordered Ori off his feet and did work enough for both of them while Nori loudly comment about how much he’d like to have a sit down. Or a bite to eat. Or something to drink. Or a rest. 

Thorin ignored him. He had been digging through the mess twice as vigorously as the rest of them when he wasn’t prowling around, making sure no one was being too careless as they searched.

Dís heard him muttering as he passed behind her. “All this...after all of it, this is where it ends? It can’t _be.”_

She was just about to ask him if the lads could have a moment to rest themselves since they weren’t much use in their current state, but Dwalin intercepted him before she could. “Let’s go back up top,” he said with a jerk of his head toward the treasure room door. “See what there is to see.” 

Thorin hesitated for a long minute. His eyes were on the door and he nodded his agreement that surveying the armies of Men and Elves was a good idea, but it seemed like his feet didn’t want to move. Dwalin grasped his arm at the elbow and the two of them stumbled forward, boots sliding on the unstable mound of coins and gems. Thorin watched a huge diamond tumble down, glittering in the weak torchlight. Then he shrugged off Dwalin’s hand and trudged toward the door.

Dís walked over to Fíli and Kíli, “Come on, lads, that’s enough for now. Have a rest.”

Fíli looked uncertainly at the doorway where his uncle had been, a question forming in the line that carved itself between his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Dís nodded, squeezing his shoulder tight with tired fingers. Kíli needed no further prompting. He pulled himself up onto a platform and lay right down on the cool marble, closing his eyes. Dís wouldn’t be surprised if he fell asleep then and there. 

Fíli joined his brother, but did not lay down, he sat beside him and looked worriedly at his mother as she made for the doorway. “Aren’t you going to have a lie down?”

Dís shook her head, “Going to see what’s what - no, _stay_ there. I’ll be back soon.”

Balin followed her, close behind. His jaw was set beneath his beard and his eyes shadowed. Neither said a word, but Dís fell back to let him take the lead to the battlements for she did not remember the way. 

The armies, they had to be a thousand strong or more, were camped where they had been the night before, but a dozen had come forward. The Elves hung back, on horseback, bearing the standards of the Woodland Realm. Bard stood at the fore of the small group of Men who held aloft the ancient banners of Dale, dressed in the livery of Lake-town.

Thorin hailed them again, asking why they had come, armed, to their gates.

“Why do you fence yourself like a robber in his hole?” Bard called up, shielding his eyes against the glare of the sun. Thorin’s fists clenched and Dís could hear the squeaking of Dwalin’s teeth as he clenched his jaw. 

Robbers! Robbers, indeed! The insult was so galling, Thorin turned away, his expression furious. Dís was amazed he could rein in his temper, but she knew it was getting close to sparking a conflation. Too often Thorin’s temper got them into trouble in the West. Silence was his last recourse in the face of frustration.

The Master was nowhere to be seen, nor were any members of Bard’s family. Dís distantly hoped that they had been spared the dragon’s wrath, despite his disrespect. It was impossible to tell if his shadowed eyes were grieved or not. 

“We are not yet foes,” Bard spoke again, the mouthpiece for the army. Strange how fortunes could turn so suddenly; a week ago he’d been inches from a gaol cell. “We came expecting to find none living here, yet now that we are met there’s matter of a-a parley. And a council.”

Thorin whipped around, a snarl on his lips, but Balin grabbed his wrist firmly and tugged him back. 

“Take a breath,” he muttered. “If we can avoid a battle...there are two-thousand Men and Elves in our midst and the Arkenstone is not found.”

Thorin breathed in, broad chest expanding beneath his tunic. He didn’t exhale for a long time and when he did it came out as a short gust. He looked even more tense than he had been before, as if he was blown glass, cracking from the center, holding himself together through sheer will.

“Thorin - ” Dís began, but what she wanted to say she did not know. Come away? Sit for a minute? Rest a while? Eat something, for they had not eaten since they left Lake-town? But he did not hear her. He made his jerky way to the low wall and gripped the stone as if it was the only thing tying him to this world.

“Who are you, then?” Thorin spat angrily. “That you would come to _parley?”_

There was a pause. Though she could not see from such a distance, Dís imagined that Bard took a breath as deep as Thorin had for he shouted up at them, “I am Bard, descended of Girion, Lord of Dale. It was by _my_ hand the beast was slain. Is that not a matter that concerns you?”

Thorin drew back a bit, but his face was as tense as his body. Dís could not read his expression for the life of her. Was he relieved? _Jealous?_

Swallowing thickly, Thorin called down to him, “Say what you would.”

The dragon had come to Esgaroth, just as he promised. The way Bard told it, Smaug laid waste to the village before Bard dealt him his last blow - falling into the lake, ruining their harbor. Their livelihood. Bard and his army had come on behalf of the Master.

“I would speak for him,” he concluded, voice hoarse from speaking so long and at such a volume. “Do you have no thought for the sorrow and misery of his people? We - they aided you in your distress and in return you have brought nothing but _ruin_ where you promised gold. Will you make good on your promise now?”

Bard’s voice carried over the field and reached the army behind him, who sent up a cry, baying for the blood of the dwarves and the sack of their kingdom.

Stone cracked beneath Thorin’s fingers. “I promised _nothing,”_ he roared so loudly Dís’s ears hurt. “No Man has claim to the treasure of _my_ people! Smaug stole it from us - the treasure was not _his_ that his evil should be repaid with a share of it!”

“The treasure of Dale lies mingled in that hoard!” Bard shouted back, unbowed. “Would you share in the dragon’s evil? I know the minds of dwarves, I know the greed of your folk - ”

“You know nothing!” Thorin cried, even as Balin grabbed him by the belt and made to tug him back - either to stop him shouting or to ensure his safety was unclear. Thorin was leaning so far over the wall that he was in danger of falling.

“Come away,” Balin muttered. “If they will not speak reasonably or lay aside their arms, come _away._ There is nothing more you can do.”

But Thorin dug his heels in and continued with a tight throat, “The price of goods and assistance from the Lake-Men we will pay in due time. But _nothing_ will we give under threat of force - not the price of a loaf of bread. While an army lies before our doors, we will look on you as foes. And thieves.”

Then, finally, Thorin gave in to Balin’s urging and turned his back on the Men. Balin let go of him and started back to the interior of the Mountain. Dís and Dwalin made to follow him, but Thorin stopped and returned to the wall. His hands hung limply at his sides and his next question was not shouted at the top of his voice, but echoed down to the ears of the Men and Elves nevertheless.

“I wonder,” he asked, slowly. “What share of our inheritance you would have to our kindred, had you found the hoard unguarded and us slain.”

There was no response for so long that Dís came to her brother’s side and peered down, expecting to find Bard walking back to his Men. Yet there he stood, squinting up at them in silence.

“A just question,” he said at last. Reluctantly, it seemed. “But you are not dead. And we are not robbers.”

Thorin nodded grimly, a suspicion confirmed. He did not bestow upon his sister a sideways glance, but his hand blindly found hers behind the wall. She squeezed his fingers and he relayed one last message to their would-be graverobbers. 

“Send the Elves away,” he ordered. “I will not treat with an armed host or the friends of the Elvenking. They have no claim upon us. Come yourself, unarmed into our halls. Then and _only_ then will I have any further doings with you. If you retain your arms, know well that you _will_ have need of them.”

Then Bard did turn away. The Elves rode back to their fellows swiftly and the Men marched quickly in retreat from the Mountain. Bard followed behind, hands dangling out of the frayed sleeves of his patched coat. His longbow was slung along his back, his quiver full, but he bowed his head, lost to thoughts and care.

“Fuck ‘em,” Dwalin said succinctly summing up all that Dís was feeling. “The gall, the _nerve_ \- ”

“Peace,” Balin held up his hand to stay Dwalin’s harague. “We heard them. I’ve no need to hear it all said again.”

“If we don’t find the Arkenstone - ” Thorin started, but Dwalin cut him off. 

“We _will,”_ he said with utmost conviction. “It’s the heart of the Mountain, it’s _ours._ We’re going to find it.”

Dís kept quiet, but she had her doubts. It would take years to comb through that hoard, even if all the Longbeards who settled in the Ered Luin came to help. She wanted to believe, as her kin did, that if they were meant to find it they would find it, but what good would that do? The nearest dwarven kingdom, apart from the Iron Hills, was a month’s march away in good weather and the snow was already upon them. With an army at their gates, breathing down their necks, even if they _did_ find the Arkenstone to call for aid, by the time another Clan arrived, it might be too late.

Bombur greeted them when they entered the treasurehouse, breaking off squares of cram and forcing it into their hands. 

“Only got enough to keep us going for another week or two, if we’re stingy,” he informed them apologetically. “Them Men an’ Elves cleared off?”

Thorin ignored the offered food and walked around him. That was probably all the answer Bombur required, but Dís shook her head in the negative for good measure, taking a bite of the traveling bread. It was dry and flavorless and stuck in her throat going down. 

“Why won’t you _talk_ to them?” Bilbo asked imploringly, popping out of nowhere at Thorin’s elbow. Thorin had been making a beeline for his slumbering nephews, with the intention of telling them to rise and continue the search, but he stopped, blinking at Bilbo in confusion.

“I _tried,”_ Thorin growled. “They would not be moved.”

“You didn’t _talk_ to them,” Bilbo shot back, irritation in every line of his thin shoulders, his pale, uncalloused hands and narrow chest. “You shouted at them!”

“Were you there?” Dís asked, confused. It had been herself, Balin, Dwalin, and Thorin alone on the battlements. Of that she was certain. Almost certain. It had been a long, sleepless night.

Bilbo hesitated a moment, blowing out a breath through his cheeks. 

“Your brother was bellowing loudly enough to shake the mountain!” he replied, which was no answer. “Bard said their home was destroyed, just give them a little - ”

“I owe them _nothing,”_ Thorin repeated.

“Bard killed the dragon!” Bilbo declared. The others looked up at that, but only, it seemed, to have the tale confirmed.

“And he is entitled to the dragon’s coat,” Balin said curtly, as Thorin’s face was turning very red. “That is the dragonslayer’s boon - were we contracted to him? No. And such a bounty as that dragon carried on his belly ought to satisfy them before we pay for our food and drink.”

“Not if Bard won’t give it up,” Dwalin said grimly. “Wouldn’t that be something? Talk about the greed of dwarves, when the greed of Men - ”

“But their homes! Their children!” Bilbo went on as if he hadn’t heard them.

“Are we to pay the price of blood in gems?” Dís asked, throwing her hands up in the air, speaking so loudly that she roused her sons from slumber. _“We_ didn’t kill them. The dragon did that and the dragon can pay for their suffering in the gold he stole from _us._ As far as I care, let that be enough to satisfy them.”

“You _promised,”_ he insisted, but of course they had not. They were not contracted with the Master of Laketown or the exiled Lord of Dale. Thorin announced that the Men would share in the bounty of the Mountain, not that they should be given free leave to plunder her riches and slay her children. 

“We did not,” Balin shook his head gravely and Bilbo looked ready to scream or cry.

“Do be _reasonable - ”_

“What’s going on?” Fíli asked, jogging up to them, Kíli at his heels. He looked between his mother and his uncle and Bilbo in worried confusion, scrubbing his eyes with his fists, like a child rising from a nap. “Are we going to war?”

“Not at the moment,” Thorin gritted out, jaw clenched. “Keep up the search.”

“But what did they say?” Kíli asked. “Are Bard’s wife and children alright?”

“We don’t know,” Dís spoke up since Thorin looked too weary and too angry to suffer further questioning. “He didn’t say - the dragon devastated Esgaroth. That’s all we know, not the number or names of the slain. And now they’ve come to sack our halls and take our gold in revenge.”

“No they haven’t!” Bilbo countered. “They’ve come for help!”

Thorin laughed at that, a low, terrible sound that echoed throughout the chamber. “Help?” he sneered. “Help? Oh, aye, they come with swords in their hands and Elves at their backs in order to beg help. Foolish halfling, don’t talk of what you do not understand.”

“I understand!” he drew himself up to his full, megre height and swallowed hard, looking up at Thorin defiantly. “You are...none of you are thinking clearly! Why won’t you just do as they ask?”

“Because they are not _asking,”_ Thorin declared at last. “They’ve come to lay siege upon us - if they lay down their arms and send away our enemy, _then_ and only then will I have words with them. Do not question me again, you have no right.” He raised dark and troubled eyes to the rest of the Company. _“Any_ of you. Unless I seek your counsel, do not give it to me.”

The rest of the Company murmured their assent, including Kíli and Fíli who added, “Aye, sir,” at the end of their reply. Then they all went back to work, searching and sifting through mounds and mounds of gold, looking for the one thing in all the bountiful beauty and wealth around them that really mattered.

It was midday outside the Mountain when the Men approached again - nay, not Men, a _Man_ , alone, stepped forward to act as messenger. Thorin almost refused to remain to listen to him, since he said explicitly that he would speak to Bard directly or not at all. Still the banners of the Woodland Realm waved among the standards of the Lake-Men and until they disappeared, Thorin maintained he would have no doings with Elves and Men.

“The Arkenstone has not been found,” Balin reminded him, pointlessly. They knew, they all _knew_ , from the aching in their joints from endlessly hauling armfuls of treasure to their broken fingernails, pawing through it, looking for the gem. They paused only to drink from the freshwater that mercifully still flowed steadily through the Mountain and had not stagnated with the passing of the years. “See what they have to say.”

“In the name of Esgaroth and the Forest,” the Man - Alfrid, the Master’s particular friend - began and immediately put the dwarves on their guard. The whole of the Company was anxiously gathered on the battlements and in the hall beyond, listening intently to what the Men would say to them. 

Óin watched Dís’s restlessly moving hands as she signed what he could not hear. 

_The Elves and Men speak as one,_ she informed him, ears perked to listen as Alfrid droned on.

“We speak unto Thorin, Thráin’s son - Oakenshield, calling himself ‘King Under the Mountain.’”

This last was said with a sneer and Dís dropped her hands as a cry of anger sounded from her fellows and she found herself raising her voice in the furious chorus. How _dare_ they deny her brother’s claim? Beyond the royal blood that flowed in his veins, he had been King to their people longer than these Men had been alive. From the killing fields of Azanulbizar to their uncertain fate in the valleys of the Ered Luin to the foot of their homeland at last he had done his duty. How _dare_ they?

“What is he saying?” Óin demanded of Dís and she forced her fingers to unclench so that she could reply. 

_They deny Thorin. Not ‘King Under the Mountain,’ they say._

Óin swore as loudly at the rest of them, but Dís gestured for him to keep quiet, Alfrid had begun again. 

“Consider well the claims that have been urged!” he shouted warningly. “Or be declared our foe! Our terms are - ”

“They can’t set terms,” Nori muttered, poking Dís in the back. “Can they?”

“They’ve got nearly two-thousand armed Men and Elves,” she replied, irritably. “They can say whatever they’d like. Now hush, I’m trying to listen!”

“ - as follows! One-twelfth of the dragon’s hoard will be given unto Bard as dragonslayer and heir of Girion, as the treasure of Dale lies within that Mountain.”

“One-twelfth?” Balin breathed, incredulously. “All the wealth of Dale was not _one one-hundredth_ of the treasure of Erebor.”

“The dragonslayer’s got his bounty already,” Óin glowered at the wall and the Man beyond it. “What concern is it of ours if the thrice-damned beast is at the bottom of the Lake? Let him swim for it.”

 _“Bard_ from that portion will give unto the Men of the Lake for the rebuilding of Esgaroth. If Thorin will have the friendship and honor of the lands about, as enjoyed by his sires - ahem! _Alleged_ sires of old. He will give somewhat of his own comfort for the Men of the Lake.”

At the word ‘comfort,’ something in Thorin snapped. Before any of the Company could make a move to stop him he picked up one of the bows which which they intended to defend themselves against the dragon, upon his return and shot an arrow directly into the wooden shield that Alfrid bore.

The scream that tore itself from the Man’s throat pierced the valley and startled the ravens from the aviary. 

“Attack!” he ordered. “Lay siege to them! They’ve fired first! They’ve drawn first blood! They’ve - ”

“You aren’t bleeding.”

Bard came forward from the small party that accompanied Alfrid though he remained anonymous amongst the band. He raised his hand to stay his soldiers. No trumpets sounded. No hooves smote the ground. None charged forth.

He pulled the arrow, with some difficulty, from Alfrid’s shield and cast it upon the ground before him. “If that is your answer, I declare the Mountain besieged. We shall bear no weapons against you, but you shall not depart from it until you agree to a truce and a parley.”

Thorin made no reply. The bow was still in his hands, but he did not reach for another arrow. His face was as stone.

Bard looked up, disgust plain on his features. “We leave you to your gold. Eat _that_ , if you will.” 

Once again, they turned from the face of Erebor and retreated to their camps. Fires were lit, fish was roasted, as if the dwarves might relinquish home, treasure, and pride for the promise of a meal. 

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Balin said, half to himself, following Thorin while the others went in search of water to mix with what remained of their flour to make something edible, stretching their taxed and meager supplies. “They were our allies, once.”

“And now they are our enemies,” Thorin countered, eyes fixed on the treasurehouse. 

“You shouldn’t have been so hasty,” Balin was jogging along to keep up with Thorin’s long strides. “You should have _spoken_ , at least, if only to tell them that their terms were insulting and you would not hear them.”

“They had their chance,” Thorin maintained. “My ears would have been open if they sent away the Elvenking, but the refused. If they lay down their _arms_ , but they refused. Am I not King? How can I bear the mantle if I cannot be treated as one at last?”

“A king must be wise in word as he is in battle,” Balin replied testily. _“Words,_ Thorin, not arrows!”

“Does no one hear me today?” Thorin thundered, rounding on his cousin in a rage. “I said if I wanted counsel I would seek it!”

Thorin walked alone into the treasurehouse, leaving Balin standing alone on the threshold. He stared at his king and cousin for a long while, watching him plunge into the treasure with a single-minded intensity that was almost feverish.

Not almost, he thought, dread climbing up his spine with deep digging claws. Thorin had neither eaten nor drunk anything all day. Sweat pooled on the small of his back and trickled down his brow. He looked ill. He looked like his grandfather. 

“Would you eat gold?” he asked, his tone tinged with desperation. “With the emnity of the Lake-Men and the Elves, with whom will we trade? _Think_ , Thorin!”

But Thorin, either because he would not or could not hear, did not reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EVERYONE IS BEING SUCH A DICK. I CAN'T STAND IT. THEY ARE ALL ASSHOLES (assholes with cause, but still assholes).


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul Word of the Day - 'Udad' meaning 'greater father' aka 'Grandfather' as decided by **khuzdul4u** on Tumblr.

Two days later their had their reply from Dáin. He was on the move toward Erebor with an army of five-hundred willing souls at his back. They would arrive in a week’s time and that news made Thorin smile for the first time in days.

“They cannot enter the valley unmarked,” Balin pointed out tiredly, though Thorin had not asked for his opinion. “I don’t like their chances if they’re set upon before the Gate. And winter is coming fast on their heels.”

“Winter and snow will bite both Men and Elves hard the longer they tarry in the valley,” Thorin replied grimly, folding Dáin’s missive and placing it in his pocket. “With frost coming hard on the ground and the army from the Iron Hills at their backs, they might find themselves in a softer mood to parley with.”

“Will Dáin bring food with him?” Fíli asked dully. Rations of cram hadn’t done the younglings any favors, they were listless even after a full night’s sleep.

“If the Men prove themselves more agreeable we mightn’t have to wait on Dáin,” Dís sighed. “At least we’d be able to get out and go hunting. I’d take down a deer with my bare hands and teeth for roast vension.”

“Don’t talk about roasts,” Glóin groaned. “Have pity.”

Bifur came back from his turn at the watch signing, _They come no closer. They aim no cannon; they roast fish._

“What did I _just_ say?” Glóin exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air, fingers curled as if he wanted to strangle someone.

Bombur got up to take his place on the battlements, patting Bifur on the shoulder and muttering reassurance that it wasn’t anything he’d done to set Glóin off, everyone was just on edge.

When Bombur rose, so too went Bilbo, but in the opposite direction. The dwarves didn’t have a proper fire going and though none of them complained of the cold, it was settling in his joints and turning his fingers to icicles. He hadn’t said anything, sure that his requests would go unheeded.

Something had to be done. It was clear as daylight to Bilbo that _something_ had to be done. But what? At home, whenever he needed to clear his head, he found a jaunt in fresh air tremendously helpful. The trouble was, there wasn’t much fresh air to be had underground.

The once-grand kingdom had a stuffy, stale, shut-up feeling to it. Despite the huge, vaulted ceilings and vast chambers, it felt very nearly claustrophobic to Bilbo. Probably because everyone seemed drawn relentlessly back to the treasurehouse, walled in on all sides by piles and piles of gold.

He could not take another moment of it and slipped away when he could - such chances came oftener and oftener as time went on. After he argued with Thorin, everyone seemed to forget he was there, from the grown dwarves who spent all their waking hours in search of that dratted gem to the youngest who seemed to be teetering on the brink of exhaustion. But then, why should they pay Bilbo any notice? He was only the burglar after all, his part was played.

The corridors that led away from the treasurehouse went on for miles and miles, dizzyingly up and down in every direction. His companions moved through them with more ease than he would have thought possible, the interior of the Mountain being black as pitch. He was forced to carry a torch with him, which cast looming shadows on the walls. The light caught on bits of gold, running up and down like frozen rivers.

Oh, how heartily _sick_ he was of gold! If he had known the effect it would have had on his friends, he would never have agreed to come. Truly, he could not say that they were better off in Erebor than they were outside of it. Outside they laughed and joked and talked about things that were not making war or finding precious gems.

These were the tales of dwarves he had heard in his childhood come to life before his eyes. Not heroes who went on quests in defense of home, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money and no head for much beyond rocks and war.

What did it _matter_ how much Bard asked of them? Let him have _half_ the treasure if it meant there would be no bloodshed! How could they be so thoughtless? They had trekked across the continent to reclaim their homeland and now they were simply going to lay down and die, all for a pile of coins!

Not for the first time since he left them at the mouth of the Mirkwood, Bilbo wished Gandalf was there, but the fate of their wizard was unknown and the dwarves did not seem to fret much over it. They did not seem to fret over anything but their blasted gold.

Was this what he’d come for? To begin a war? Bilbo shivered in the darkness.

The hall was widening and his torch lit on more than glimmers and flecks in the stone walls. Here and there lay debris, columns and pillars knocked down, huge stones and rubble lay on the floor, undisturbed for over a century. There were long windows here - naturally they could not be windows _outside_ \- laid into the walls, with scenes and patterns laid into the panes in colored glass. They were untouched, it seemed the dragon was as single-minded in his pursuit of treasure as the Company.

Bilbo’s silent steps slowed and he looked around, realizing that he’d gone farther than he meant to and found himself lost. Something was inscribed above him, there were words carved into a doorway - or was it a single word? - far over his head. He could not read a single rune, having not been taught the dwarvish language or alphabet. He swept his torch around in an arc, trying to divine some meaning from the windows.

The pictures were of dwarves, he saw, heads clustered together with their eyes on a central figure who was...declaiming? Holding a scroll, he thought, it was too dark, he couldn’t see. Another pane seemed to depict working dwarves writing. Was he near a library? Why would they hide a library away even deeper in the Mountain than they hid their treasure?

Bilbo contemplated the doors again. He had to climb over huge fallen boulders to get close to them, there was a pile directly before the massive carved things with handles as long and thick as his arm from shoulder to wrist. Bilbo’s hand wouldn’t close around them. At first he thought they were gilded and he wondered why Smaug had not ripped them from the doors, but closer inspection revealed them to be a darker color than he initially thought. Brass.

They did not push open and Bilbo did not try pulling on them, even if the boulders were not blocking the entrance, he could not hope to open them, not with his meagre strength. A pity, he thought. Spending a few minutes in a library would help him collect his thoughts, even if he couldn’t read a single book.

Clambering down off the rocks, he dislodged a few and the torchlight hit on a mangled piece of jewelry lying, half-crushed, on the floor. Eyeglasses, he realized.

Bilbo crouched down and picked them up. The frames were gold, bent, but still intact. One of the lenses was cracked, but the other was only scratched. Bilbo held them up to his own eyes on impulse, but pulled them away immediately when the corridor blurred and swam before him. These were not simple magnifying lenses, but well-crafted things intended for someone whose vision was incredibly poor.

“What are you doing down here?”

Bilbo yelped and jumped, fumbling the glasses and nearly dropping his torch.

Balin, he saw. The dwarf’s eyes glimmered strangely in the darkness, reflecting his torch. Bilbo had seen his companion’s eyes glow oddly before, in the night and in the Elvenking’s dungeons. It never failed to prove an unsettling sight.

“Just having a walk,” Bilbo said, trying to discreetly put the eyeglasses in his pocket, but he froze when Balin spoke again.

“What have you got in your hand?” he asked, squinting and tilting his head to the side. Bilbo raised a trembling hand and uncurled his fingers. It was nothing he shouldn’t have, he told himself. They were just lying on the floor.

But Balin’s face went white as his beard when he saw them. He put his hand out and demanded - not _asked_ , it was clearly a command - “Give them to me.”

Bilbo’s heart pounded in his throat. Oh, no, not Balin _too_. Thorin’s heart and mind had been trained on the Mountain for years and years and he was so hot-headed. But Balin was always so...rational. Despite his earlier bitter comments about stacking the numbers of the dead against one another and seeing how they compared, Bilbo still held out hope that he would not be affected by the influence of the treasure.

Shoring up his courage, Bilbo’s fingers curled once again about the spectacles. They were only eyeglasses. More than that, they were _broken_ eyeglasses. Useless. Utterly useless and without any distinguishing characteristics, save for the golden frames. Why should Balin want them? From the fierce look that came over his face, Bilbo was half sure he was going to tackle him. Was he going to snatch them away, for a thimbleful of gold?

“They’re broken,” Bilbo said, tossing them back on the floor between them carelessly, just to see what Balin would do. All his worst fears were confirmed the second they left his grip. Balin lunged for them and, moving faster than Bilbo would have thought him possible, caught them before they hit the floor.

The dwarf stared at them a long while, transfixed. His eyes moved slowly from the spectacles in his hand to the pile of rubble on the floor and Bilbo stared at him, dumbstruck and disbelieving. He thought he saw _tears_ in his friend’s eyes. All for gold.

After what seemed like an eternity had passed, Balin sighed and pocketed the spectacles. With his back to Bilbo he said, “You shouldn’t be here. Rejoin the others. The wolves are howling at the gates and without the Arkenstone...we have very little time.”

Bilbo’s throat tightened as he nodded silently. He’d heard enough to understand why Thorin needed the Arkenstone so very badly. He wanted to use it to command armies. He hoped - how he’d hoped! - that Thorin would see reason. That if he would not listen to him, his halfling burglar, he might at least listen to Balin’s wise counsel.

Only Balin seemed as far gone as Thorin now. Just as terse and just as blinded by gold, if the way he kept running his fingers over the eyeglasses in his pocket was anything to judge by.

The weight in Bilbo’s pocket grew heavier and heavier with each passing moment. As he retreated and left Balin alone with the rubble and his worthless prize, Bilbo thought he knew what he must do. He made his way from the library to the battlements and offered to relieve Bombur of the watch.

* * *

 

Something woke Dís out of a sound sleep, but she couldn’t for the life of her tell what it was. There was no sound, save the snores of her companions and the sound of them shifting, some coming into wakefulness as abruptly as she had.

“What was that?” Dwalin demanded, hand curling around the handle of his axe. His eyes found Dís in the darkness. “Did you hear something?”

“No,” she shook her head, then added, “Could be. I don’t know.”

“Mam?” Kíli asked, rubbing his eyes and sitting up beside her. “Has something happened?”

“I don’t think so,” she said soothingly, patting his shoulder and urging him to lie back down. “Go back to sleep love. If there’s aught afoot we should know of, Bombur’ll tell us.”

Bombur or Bofur, whoever’s turn it was to keep watch upon the camp of Men. She hadn’t any idea what time it was, whose turn at the watch it was. She only knew that she was hungry and tired and had a stiff neck from sleeping on stone for many nights together, using her balled up coat as a pillow.

The din of sliding, clanging coins and cups and gemstones reached her ears the moment she lay herself down to try to sleep again. Perhaps that was what woke her, though it was a distant, tinny ring, almost drowned out by the others’ heavy breathing.

Dís sat up and took stock of the others. All accounted for, save Bombur, Balin, Thorin, and Bilbo. And she knew without having to think on it for long who was responsible for the din from the treasurehouse.

Dís stood up and walked as quietly around her sleeping companions as she could, noting the pallor of many of their complexions and the ghastly grey circles around their eyes. She likely did not look better; she felt as if she’d been soaked through, pounded on a rock, and wrung out to dry. Little rest and little food would do that to a body.

“Thorin,” she called once, twice, three times before he looked up at her. Dís folded her arms and hunched her shoulders in though the room was no colder than the rest of the Mountain. Thorin, by contrast, was sweating, his hair hanging in lank ribbons around his face. “What are you doing?”

“Do you have to ask?” he growled at her. “It’s here, I _know_ it’s here, I saw it fall with my own eyes! Unless you’ve come to help, leave me in peace, I don’t have time to talk.”

She walked toward him, carefully picking her way through the path they managed to clear. Dori had been the one to suggest they try to sort and organize the treasurehouse as best they could and though it slowed down the hunt considerably, Thorin conceded the wisdom of such a plan. Dís wasn’t sure whether it was wisdom or praticality on Dori’s part for Ori, Fíli and Kíli had been relegated to sorting when sifting through the hills of gold around them became too wearisome a task for their arms to maintain.

“You need to rest,” she said, coming closer when he tried to walk away. “You do! Going for days and days without sleeping isn’t going to make finding the Arkenstone any easier. What if you mistake it for a diamond and throw it over your shoulder where it’ll be lost again?”

“I would _never,”_ Thorin declared raggedly.

“Sit, at least,” Dís requested, holding her hand out for Thorin to take. “Just for a few minutes. You’re shaking.”

Thorin looked ready to retort that he was _not_ and as King Under the Mountain, none could comment on his physical aspect without his permission, but he looked down at himself and saw that he was shaking. Hanging his head, he took Dís’s hand and let her lead him over to the staircase. He sat and balance his elbow on his knee, cradling his head in his hand. “Why hasn’t it appeared?”

Dís sighed and shook her head, sitting shoulder to shoulder beside him, “I don’t know. There’s such a _lot_ to see - ”

Thorin shook his head miserably. “Balin found his mother’s wedding veil and his father’s gilded helm. Tangled together, like they were meant to be. If it was meant for me, I’d have found it by now.”

“Don’t…” Dís started, but bit her tongue. A few of their number found treasures they recognized. Glóin was sure that the battered shield he’d pulled from the wreckage was the very same one he and Frerin had made merry with as children. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“Is it?” Thorin asked, raising his head and looking at her with desperation in his eyes. “Was it coincidence that brought the gem to us in the first place? During the most prosperous year of Udad’s reign? Would you call that _coincidence,_ namad?”

Dís shifted uncomfortably and did not answer.

“If it was meant for me, He would have guided it to me or me to it,” Thorin sighed, so brokenly that Dís was sure he had started weeping. When she looked at him, his eyes were red and dry. It was just as likely his voice had cracked from lack of water as anything else.

“It’s alright,” she offered, reluctantly, knowing her words were a paltry comfort even as she spoke them. “It’s as you said, Dáin will come and with five-hundred dwarven axes bearing down on them, Bard will _have_ to yield. They lost lives to the drake’s wrath and they haven’t come to try tearing down the Gate, have they? They’ll seek a parley, as you said. We won’t even need the Arkenstone, then.”

“How can you say that?” Thorin asked, his voice a ragged whisper. He looked around, his skin a sickly yellow, reflecting the light of the gold all around. He swallowed and set his head in his hand again. “If Bard yields...even _then_ , how am I to sit upon the throne without the Arkenstone? How can I expect to rule when all who come before me will _know_ that I am… _unworthy._ Grandfather’s reign was blessed by the Maker _Himself_ and he fell to ruin. What will they suppose my fate to be, seeing a hollow place above the crown?”

Dís well understood her brother’s frustration and despair. It was so rare that they received even the smallest glimmer of approval from their Maker a sign that he was not at last disgusted with His creation, that he had not finally given them up, as he was bidden to do before Father Durin walked beneath the earth.

She did not remember the discovery of the Arkenstone, but she knew that kings and queens of the Seven Kingdoms had come to glimpse it, this sign of favor bestowed up Clan Longbeard by the Maker of them all. **Hail Thrór, Durin’s true heir!** was their cry. The tributes and homages to their people went on and on.

What a happy time it must have been. A girl-child born to the line for the first time in three generations. A stone like starlight captured and glowing through glass. How she wished she could remember.

Dís tucked an arm around Thorin’s waist and lay her head upon his shoulder. Thorin did not move or even acknowledge her, but she remained like that, nearly asleep again, until Bofur spoke over their heads.

“Sorry to trouble you,” he apologized as Dís and Thorin lumbered to their feet. “But I can’t find Bilbo. He took over Bombur’s watch and no one’s seen hide nor hair of him since. Worried he got himself lost.”

Thorin sighed and scrubbed his hands over his eyes with a muttered curse. “Go look for him, then,” he told Bofur. “I’ll take the watch for you.”

“You’ll take a _rest,”_ Dís told him irritably. “I’ll take the watch, I’ve slept, if only for a few hours - ”

But there was such a commotion when they left the treasurehouse that neither Dís nor Thorin had time to argue over watch-taking.

“They sent a messenger on!” Bombur said, red-faced, having run for them from the battlements. “Could be they come to their senses at last!”

“They might have heard that Dáin was to come,” Dís said, eyes lighting up at the prospect. “If they snatched up a letter of his. I’d give my right arm for some good news.”

“Don’t be overhasty,” Thorin cautioned, turning his head sharply at Bofur’s loud exclamation of, _“There_ you are!”

It was Bilbo, standing meekly apart from the others. His hair was ruffled and his expression wary. It must have been as Bofur thought, he’d gone wandering and gotten himself lost somewhere in the depths of the Mountain. Balin was back as well, looking considerably worse for wear. His eyes were lined and shadowed; it looked as though he hadn’t slept a wink all night, he looked nearly as bad as Thorin did.

“Where have you been?” Thorin asked Balin.

Tired blue eyes met tired blue eyes. “The library,” he replied with a remarkably even tone.

Thorin required no further explanation. He caught his breath and nodded, glancing at Dwalin who wasn’t looking at either of them. Thorin crossed to Balin and briefly laid a hand on his arm. Balin nodded as if in affirmation of some unspoken communication and Thorin released him, turning his attention on Bilbo.

“Don’t wander off,” he advised the hobbit. “The Mountain is dark and deep.”

“It...it certainly is,” Bilbo stammered, looking up at him nervously. Licking his lips he, breathlessly said, “Ah, Thorin - ” but Thorin held up a hand to stop him.

“Later,” he said, turning to the entrance to the battlements. “Let’s see what they have to say.”

At first glance, it seemed that the minds of the Men had not been turned as much as they might have hoped. They still bore spears and though not more than twenty approached the Mountain, Elven bowmen were still visible among the soldiers who stood at a distance.

“Hail, Thorin!” Bard shouted, helmed and armed still with Alfrid at his side. “Are you still of the same mind?”

“My mind does not change with the rising and setting of a few suns,” Thorin replied darkly. “Until you lay down your arms and the Elves of the Mirkwood absent themselves, I will not bargain with you!”

Dís shaded her eyes from the early morning glare. Bard’s face was upturned and she could not be sure from such a distance, but he seemed to be _smiling._

“Is there nothing that could entice you to yield any of your gold?”

She would not have thought Bard capable of such, but there was something almost _coy_ in the Man’s tone. What had become of his grim aspect? A prickle of fear shot through her heart, similar to the jolt that woke her in the wee hours.

“What’s he saying, Mam?” Fíli elbowed his way to her side, but she put a hand to his chest and bid him keep quiet.

“Nothing that you have to offer,” Thorin replied with forced calm. He signaled to the others that they should turn back. One by one they filed into the interior of the Mountain, pushing past Bilbo who stood at the entryway, seemingly transfixed.

“What of the Arkenstone of Thrór?”

It was so silent in the Mountain that one could have heard a pin dropped a mile away. The Company all looked at one another, for a moment, unable to comprehend what Bard had said.

“It cannot be,” Thorin whispered to himself, as horrified as he had been that night that Azog the Defiler rose from the dead.

But it was. Upon the ground, Alfrid held aloft the Heart of the Mountain, the great gift to the throne of Erebor from the Maker in His celestial forge. It was a desecration itself for a Man to lay a finger on the thing, but there it was, huge and beautiful in Alfrid’s grubby hand.

“No,” Dís breathed, hand going to her mouth. _“No.”_

“It-it’s fake, isn’t it, Mam?” Kíli asked, grasping her arm tightly. “It’s just a trick, isn’t it a trick?”

But she took his face in her hands and kissed him roughly on the brow, feeling tears prick at her eyes. It was no trick and they _would_ go to war over this.

“That is _mine,”_ Thorin snarled, practically howling his wrath down upon the Men. The fact that the crossbow he’d taken up to shoot Alfrid’s shield was still empty of arrows was likely the only thing that saved the Man from being fired on a second time. “I will not pay for what is _mine._ How came you by it? _How?”_

“We are not thieves,” Bard lied - of course he lied, of course they were thieves! They had stolen from them the Heart of the Mountain. There was no question of their thievery, it only remained to be known how they had done it. “We will return your own in exchange for our own.”

The very demand was absurd. The Arkenstone was worth more than all the wealth that had ever come into or gone out of Dale. It was worth more than the lives of every Man, Woman, and child who had drawn breath there. There was no price that could be set for the Arkenstone. They would either return it to the Dwarves of Erebor or have it cut from their grasping fingers.

 **“Die a death of flames!”** Thorin shouted, at Bard, at Alfrid, at every last Man and Elf who partook in such an act of treachery against his people. He likely would have gone on, but all the breath went out of him when a timid little voice spoke at his back.

“They got it because I gave it to them,” Bilbo said, holding his hands up supplicatingly. “But Thorin, I only - ”

Thorin’s fingers were around the halfling’s throat, lifting him off his feet with so little effort or care Bilbo might have been a handful of feathers in his iron grip. But the hobbit was flesh and blood, his fingers clawed instinctively at Thorin’s hand and his face went red, mouth opening to draw air, sputtering and gasping when there was none to be had.

“You!” he spat in the halfling’s face. “You! You miserable halfling! You descendant of rats! You _signed yourself in service to us!”_

“Please!” Bilbo wheezed with the last of the air in his lungs. “Please, listen!”

Thorin’s fingers squeezed tighter; Bilbo’s lips began to turn blue. “You are in league with my enemies! Not another word, I will throw you to the rocks!”

 _He truly means to do it,_ Dís thought numbly through her own haze of betrayal. _He’ll kill him._

Despite her anger, despite her hatred for the halfling rising, bitter and sharp as gall in her throat, she rushed forward, “Stop!”

Banish him. Send him forth from Erebor and condemn him never to lay eyes upon the golden city. Make it known throughout the land that his blue eyes should be plucked out ere he glimpse the Lonely Mountain again, but to slay - nay, _murder_ the halfling without benefit of charge or trial was unconscionable. And so she said again, “Stop!”

Dís’s heart beat a rapid tattoo in her breast and Thorin did not look at her; she did not even know if he heard her.

“You owe him a life-debt,” she reminded Thorin, her voice strong and commanding, even as her soul cringed within her. Who was this stranger, this cold, relentless _thing_ who wore her brother’s face? Scarce had she gone without seeing him a day in her life, but she hardly recognized him now.

Abruptly, the halfling fell to the floor, wheezing and rubbing at his throat. Dís saw Bofur make some aborted motion forward, but Bifur put out a hand to halt him.

“A life for a life,” Thorin snarled, turning on his heel and vanishing toward the treasurehouse. “I will be merciful one time only. If I see that thief again, no talk of life-debts will stay my hand.”

Óin went to the halfling’s side, peering at his neck, pressing against the still-tender flesh with his fingers. “There’ll be a bruise,” he predicted. “But otherwise no harm done.”

“Thank you,” Bilbo choked, but the healer drew away with fury in his eyes.

“It’s more than you deserve,” he glowered, turning his back on him.

Glóin spat on the floor just in front of Bilbo’s trembling hands, “If you were a Dwarf who’d done such and we could hold a trial, I’d want your hands.”

“Peace,” Balin said sharply, though he made no move to help Bilbo to his feet. “Let him be gone.”

“I’ll take him,” Bofur said shakily, eyeing Bilbo with a face full of disbelief and overwhelming hurt.

“I’ll go with you,” Dís volunteered, the first to touch Bilbo as she closed her hand around his upper arm. “Dwalin - ”

“Already going, lass,” he said, following the path Thorin took to the treasurehouse.

The others stood around, wringing hands and shooting hateful looks at the halfling who peered about desperately trying to find a friendly face. When his eyes fell on the lads, Ori was the first to look away.

“We trusted you,” he said softly.

“Bilbo, how _could_ you?” Kíli asked, brokenly. “We thought you were our friend.”

Fíli’s arms were folded tightly across his chest, his shoulders trembling with fury, “Can’t trust Elves, nor Men, nor halfings.”

Tears were streaming down Bilbo’s face when he replied, “I only wanted to save - ” but Dís tightened her grip and growled into his face.

“Don’t you talk to them. Not another word ‘til you’re outside the Mountain. You don’t deserve to touch the stone under your feet.”

Bofur and Dís frogmarched him through the corridors, giving the treasury a wide berth, until they found their way to the armory and the hidden door. Bofur’s eyes were shining and overbright when they shoved him into the daylight.

“Was it all a lie?” he asked, his lovely voice a hoarse whisper. “All this time...we thought you was on our side.”

“I _am,”_ Bilbo appealed to them desperately. “Won’t you please listen to me? Won’t you see sense? It’s just a stone! It’s nothing but a bit of hard earth! Just give them some gold for it and be done!”

Dís reared her hand back and would have struck him hard enough that his head strung if Bofur hadn’t caught her arm and pulled her back with a mighty heave.

“How dare you?” she shrieked at him, teeth bared. “It was a gift, it was _our_ gift from the One who Made us. Its worth cannot be measured in gold! And now you’ve stolen it and given it to our enemy and the only price we’ll pay for it will be our blood. My blood, my kin’s blood, and the blood of my _children!”_

“No!” Bilbo exclaimed, his voice taking on a pleading note. “No! The Men, they don’t want war! Neither do the Elves! I thought...I thought it would make Thorin talk to them, that’s all! I didn’t want this! Please believe me, I was only trying to do what was right!”

“It weren’t yours to touch or to take,” Bofur shook his head and swallowed thickly, though he still did not let Dís go for fear that she’d tear the hobbit limb from limb if she got the chance. “You had no right.”

“I didn’t...I didn’t know what it meant,” he said softly, looking up at them with huge blue eyes, swimming with tears. “I wanted to prevent a war.”

“Well, now you’ve begun one,” she spat at him. “There was hope, before. You gave those Men and Elves _everything._ And so they’ll take the rest.”

“I’m sorry!” Bilbo cried, raising his hands. “Bofur, Dís, I really am truly sorry!”

It was a difficult thing, for an outsider to win the friendship of the dwarves. Not easily won. And when lost, nearly impossible to reclaim. Deaf to Bilbo’s protestations, Dís closed the door, sealing the Mountain against him. Would that they could shut the rest of the world away as easily.

Bofur’s light touch on her arm undid her. Fear broke through the rage at last and sent Dís crashing down to the floor of the armory, surrounded by the machinery of war.

She thought of Hervor and wee Gimli. Of Thyra and the children. Of Irpa. Of Gróin and Maeva and all the rest who waited in the West with hope and dread in their hearts. They had failed them. They had failed them all.

She thought of her sons and found she could not breathe. Bofur held her and whispered shushing nonsense in her ear, is if she was crying, but her eyes were dry. She was not grieved, not yet. Only terribly, terribly afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of Arkenstone feels. And I am of the opinion, however unpopular, that taking the Arkenstone to Bard was THE WORST DECISION BILBO COULD HAVE POSSIBLY MADE. I take the 'heart of the Mountain' thing kind of literally.


	50. Chapter 50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** For **self-harm** , some **ableist rhetoric** in discussion of **mental illness** , **slut-shaming,** **physical violence** between siblings and just a really awful fight.

When Dís collected herself enough to return her her fellows, she found them in a state of near-panic. At first she assumed that they were still wringing their hearts out over Bilbo (not that she could blame them in the slightest) and meant to go to her sons at once, but Dwalin waylaid her and dragged her off before she could get near them. 

“What are you - where’s Thorin?” she asked when she saw that her brother was not among the beard tearing multitude. 

Dwalin’s face was grim when he replied, “That’s the trouble - he’s still in the treasurehouse.”

“But you - ”

“He wouldn’t hear it,” Dwalin cut her off. His teeth were set and when he released her arm, Dís saw that the sleeve of his tunic had been torn to the undershirt beneath, the blackwork on his shoulder in the dim half-light of the corridor. “He wouldn’t hear _me._ Threw me out - and that’s no turn of phrase, lass.”

“What?” Dís asked, eyes wide and panicked. It could not be. Even in her brother’s darkest moments when he eschewed all company save his own dark thoughts, he never turned Dwalin out on his ear. They might fight and rail at one another or come to blows, but Dwalin had always been his port in the storm. “Did you go back?”

“I’ve known your brother nearly two-hundred years,” Dwalin said flatly. “You think being thrown on my arse would stop me? I tried, Balin was half-way over and _Óin_ if that wouldn’t put the fear of fire in him. But he shut the doors. That’s why I got you.”

A rushing sound, like water or blood, filled Dís’s ears and she remembered a dozen little moments that ought to have made alarm flare in her heart, the spark never quite catching over the past days and weeks. Not until now. 

A hand, like granite, closing around her arm. _The prettiest thing under the Mountain...the Arkenstone. You remember, don’t you? Don’t you?_

Shadowed eyes in a corridor, a mouth that could not smile. _There’s precious little to be grateful for._

And the sight of the halfling, dangling, blue-lipped, hundreds of feet above the earth. _I will throw you to the rocks!_

Any one of those things - save the last - taken alone, she’d brushed aside in her mind as Thorin being Thorin. He was under enormous strain. Wasn’t he always? Sometimes he cracked under the pressure. Didn’t he sometimes? 

Angry shouting, bared teeth, slammed doors. Weekly, sometimes daily facts of life when living with Thorin. On one memorable occasion, he bent the fire poker in two. There was only so much pressure a body could take before it started to bend. And Thorin bent and bent over the years, but he came back from it, he fought on. 

“He’ll come out,” Dís spoke to the tops of Dwalin’s cracked and travel-worn boots. “He...you know he does this. Shuts himself up and away for a few hours, then he - ”

“He _doesn’t,_ not like this,” Dwalin shook his head, breathing out raggedly like a bull. “When he grabbed that halfling, I’ll admit, I thought _’Let him drop’_ \- ”

“You didn’t!” Dís cried, seizing hold of his hand, squeezing his fingers between hers. “You didn’t, not really, we don’t just...murder. Not even for such a theft as that, you _didn’t_ mean it.”

Dwalin’s face was unreadable, the shadows carved in deep, like the axe-groove scar that almost took his eye. His brow was furrowed and his jaw was clenched tight under his beard, but Dís held fast in her belief about Dwalin’s intentions. She recognized him still, beneath the pain and strain and anger. Though he might have wished the worst of the hobbit in that first agonizing moment, he never would have let him drop, she was sure of it. 

“Maybe I didn’t,” Dwalin said, tilting her chin up with the hand that she wasn’t holding like a lifeline. “But he did. If you hadn’t stopped him he _would_ have.”

“He would have loathed himself,” Dís maintained, horror coloring her words. She had to force herself not to think of it, she’d only _just_ regained the merest semblance of composure and it was a thin, fragile facade at best. “He would have regretted it, he’d...he’d have come to his senses - ” 

“But if he hadn’t, Bilbo would’ve been dead and his blood would have been on Thorin’s hands,” Dwalin maintained, forcing the issue. “Balin said as much while you were gone, we’d have drawn first blood and those Men and Elves would have run the lot of us through with their swords and arrows. You didn’t just save Bilbo out there, you saved the lot of us.”

Dís didn’t want to hear it. She almost shoved Dwalin away from her and ran, though where she would go she did not know. She hadn’t done anything, she stubbornly thought. She hadn’t goaded Thorin into any action he wouldn’t have taken had he been...had he been…

Had he been in his right mind. Which he was not, at the moment. 

Had Thorin been in his right mind, he would have screamed at Bilbo loud enough to shake the Mountain to its foundation. He likely would have taken him by his braces and thrown him away again, too disgusted to touch him. Dís did not believe he would have listened to the burglar’s pleas or his explanations, not as she and Bofur had done. Thorin had a quick temper, but not a murderous temper. 

“Easy,” Dwalin muttered, catching her round the arms as she fell against him. Had she been a woman of Man, she might have fainted, but she was a dwarf and just knocked her head against Dwalin’s shoulder, growling out her frustration and despair. 

“How can I be?” she asked. “When there’s an army at our gate, another marching to meet them and my brother’s _mind_ is lost!”

She pulled back abruptly, and slammed her fist into a wall. The stone cracked under the blow and her knuckles throbbed, but the pain was only a temporary distraction. Dwalin caught her by the elbow and pulled her back against his chest, pinning her arms at her side. 

“Don’t you go to pieces on me,” he murmured in her ear, his voices as hard and tough as the arms that held her fast. “Don’t you - he’s not _lost,_ he finds his way back, but this time - ”

“Let me _go!”_ Dís snapped, not caring to hear his explanations, whether Thorin would find them again. _Lost,_ , they called it. Like he’d just gotten turned around down a side street and would come ambling up to the house with a chagrined smile on his face. 

This was all they’d been afraid of since the beginning and Dís had seen the signs and she hadn’t done anything to stop it. Hadn’t stopped to think about how much might be too much. Hadn’t been careful enough, hadn’t paid him enough attention, hadn’t taken _care_ of him. When she was a little girl of sixty she’d promised in the midst of a summer storm in a Mannish in, while her brother clutched her hand in the dark and wept, that she would take care of him and she’d failed. Failed Thorin, failed her children, failed her kin, failed her _people._ She wanted to run to the darkest reaches of the Mountain and never be found again.

But Dwalin wouldn’t let her. He shook his head mutely until she stopped struggling. Dís raggedly spat out, “In Lake-town, I asked your brother if Thorin would be alright, he didn’t say a word. I should have known _then_ , should have...I should have done _something_ because if Balin didn’t know - ”

“Maybe my brother doesn’t know everything!” Dwalin snapped at her. “Maybe he’s muddling through this the same as we are and half the time he’s the most unpleasant bastard you’ve ever crossed axes with! Ever think of _that?”_

No. No, she hadn’t. For Balin was...kind, wise, brilliant. He _did_ know everything, she thought, with all the certainty a child had in a beloved parent. But her parents had both fallen, one to madness, one to grief. The Balin of the past few days - angry, terse, miserable - could she really elevate him so high above the rest of them? 

“What’s it matter?” Dís asked, trying to twist around to look Dwalin in the face, but he seemed to think she was trying to get away again and wouldn’t budge. “Balin...everyone’s been saying it since we started! That the Quest is mad, the whole family’s mad, Thorin’s mad - since _before_ we started. How he has Udad’s _bearing_ , how he needs to wash his hands of his legacy and start from the bedrock afresh.”

“Here now,” Dwalin continued doggedly. “And you fought against those words, so did he! I came to tell you I thought he’s far gone, past where I can reach, maybe, but not you.”

Dís froze, she practically went limp and stumbled forward when Dwalin released her at last. Turning to look at him, she shook her head in denial before she said, _“Me?_ What can I do for him that you haven’t done? How can I expect he’ll listen to _me_ when the Arkenstone is in the hands of our enemies? When they come to wage war - ”

**“They do not want war.”**

Despite the close quarters, it had been simplicity itself to imagine that she and Dwalin were somehow alone in the Mountain. That their voices hadn’t carried, that their companions could not hear them shouting at at each other. But it wasn’t Balin who’d come forward to tell them to be quiet or Fíli and Kíli who dashed at them with fear and confusion in their eyes. It was Bifur. Standing scant feet away, his expression grave, but his hands steady as the rock around them.

“What?” Dís asked, too startled to summon any ire for him. 

Bifur looked between them for a moment, then took a breath and spoke again, **“They come with arms, yes. But to fight? I do not know. I do not think so. For why should they tarry? We are fourteen, they are a thousand-strong. Yet they wait. If they came to conquer...but they have not done. They wait.”**

“With the Arkenstone in their grasp!” Dís ran a hand through her bedraggled hair furiously. “Maybe they just want to make sport of us. To see us _beg - ”_

**“Bilbo knew not what it was,”** Bifur said softly. **“Nor Bard, I think.”**

“The thrice-damned Elvenking knows,” Dwalin muttered bitterly and added a curse in their fathertongue that made Bifur give him a reproachful look. 

**“But the Elvenking does not speak,”** Bifur pointed out, quickly adding, **“They dishonor us. But they do not want to make war with us. They...do not know what they are doing. No more than we do. Than _he_ does.”**

If Bifur was trying to make her feel better, it wasn’t working. Never mind what the halfling knew or didn’t know, Dís thought bitterly. He may not have known what the Arkenstone was, but he knew it was important to them. He’d broken his contract, stealing away that which he was meant to restore. Why would their enemies have taken the Heart of the Mountain, profaned it by holding it in their hands like a grubby little stone they meant to use to break windows. 

Were they not a race of warriors? Had not the story of their kind been one of an endless struggle to survive? Against Orcs and Goblins, aye, but Men and Elves too, when the times called for it.

But that was just the question Bifur was asking. Was _this_ the time? They had come to reclaim Erebor, not to fight for her. They should never have had to, for the Mountain was _theirs._ Bard refused to recognize Thorin’s claim - ‘he who calls himself King Under the Mountain,’ she could spit at the memory of _that_ nasty little turn of phrase. They meant to walk over their corpses and seize their wealth.

Did it matter if they were reluctant to run the Company through themselves first? Didn’t that just mean they were cowards, in addition to being liars and thieves?

Bard seemed to want them on their knees before him, showering him and his people with gold enough to sink their floating city. He wanted them to show him their necks. But _did_ he? Really? If he was so reluctant to put the blade to them, perhaps his mind was not turned to combat as unyieldingly as they thought. 

Bifur came forward then and lay a steady hand on Dís’s shoulder. His black eyes sought her blue ones and he looked at her so closely she wanted to shrink away, but she held his gaze and listened when he said, **“There is hope.”**

Dís bit her lip, running a hand over her face, tugging at the ends of her beard very briefly in agitation. “While they still have the Arkenstone?” she asked weakly. “Thorin won’t...he won’t trade gold for it. To set a price devalues it, it would be obscene.”

**“He should not set a price,”** Bifur agreed. **“But if they will not attack, they may yet speak.”**

“If I may,” Balin cut in softly. He’d no doubt heard his brother’s shout about how he didn’t know anything, but he did not show any temper as he approached him. Just a wary sort of attempt at neutrality. Dís wondered for whose sake it was that he tamped down his feelings.

“War would be...inadvisable,” Balin said shortly. _“Even_ for such a treasure as the Arkenstone. The Men have been dealt a blow by the dragon already. I daresay they are weary of death. And for all their demands...it is not piles of gold they need, but aid rebuilding their cities. That aid we can provide, our _people_ can provide. If we go to war with them, it will be a battle none will win. For we will have lost the hands that till the fields and keep beasts for slaughter. The Elves will lose their trading partners. If they do not realize that now, they will soon.”

Balin heaved an awful sigh and rubbed at his eyes. “The Mountain did not run by magic. Dwarves, Elves, Men, our lives were all intertwined during the best years of prosperity. Thorin knows that, but he...needs to be reminded. And he must speak to them again.”

Such a prospect felt doubtful. She had so many doubts, so many fears and they all seemed to be coming true, one after the other. How could Bifur tell her there was hope when she felt so hopeless?

“Dís,” Dwalin’s voice made her look up, slowly and with greatest reluctance. His hands fell on her shoulders and for one wild moment she thought he was going to kiss her here, in front of everyone, but of course he did not. He just looked down at her and implored, simply, “Talk to him.”

“And say what?” she asked, desperately. “What can _I_ do, that you can’t?”

“At least coax him out,” Dwalin said, casting worried eyes in the direction of the treasurehouse. “It isn’t good for him to be on his own.”

That Dís agreed with, with her whole heart. Never let Thorin be alone. The one golden rule held above all others in her life, _Thorin must never be alone._ It was practically a holy mantra for her. 

“Fine,” Dis replied quietly. Then, straightening her back, her gaze turned steely and she said, “I did not come on this journey to gain Erebor and lose him. I’ll go.”

The doors to the treasurehouse were closed, but not locked. How could they be, when the keys that opened them were probably hopelessly lost somewhere in the mountain city. She felt the eyes of everyone on her as she slipped inside, but she did not turn back to look at them, she did not know what to say or if she could keep her expression as determined as she wished it would be. 

The light from the gold hurt her weary eyes after the darkness of the armory and the hallway. It took Dís a moment to find Thorin amid the huge piles of gold, hardly any better organized than they had been when they arrived, despite their best efforts. And Bard wanted a twelfth of it. Balin was right, it wasn’t gold the Men needed most, but bodily aid. More fool he, that lippy Lake-man.

But now was not the time to harden her heart against the Man, she needed all her strength to talk to her brother. 

“Thorin?” she called. His back was to her and his shoulders were heaving as if he’d run a great distance, but he wasn’t moving at all. “What are you - ”

“What do you want?” he asked, turning around to look at her. She nearly gasped aloud at the sight of his face, he looked _awful._ His eyes were red and sweat beaded on his brow. His hands were shaking and Dís was sure she saw blood on his fingers and arms. From digging through the treasure again, but given that they knew such an effort was pointless now, she had a sinking thought that he’d likely just done it to himself. 

“I want you to come out with us,” she said, not cowed, crossing the sifting piles of gems and spears and coins to reach him. “To come away from here, I don’t think it’s good, you being by yourself - ”

“Haven’t I always been?” he snarled when she came close enough to touch him, backing away from her and setting off a small avalanche of coins out from under his boots.

That _stung_ , deep inside, but Dís refused to let it show. It was hard, her composure was fading by the minute. “What?”

“The King rules alone, does he not?” Thorin asked and though he was looking at her, he did not seem to _see_ her. “I’ve always been - no council, no queen, no parliament, _no one_ but myself.”

“That may be…” she took a breath, trying to quell her own anger since she knew from experience that matching her brother’s temper would not help. “You don’t have a _government,_ I know, but you haven’t been alone! We’ve always - _I’ve_ always tried to ease your way.”

Thorin snorted derisively, shaking his head, “Have you? Allying yourself to a Broadbeam miner of low birth, giving me heirs whose lineage will _always_ be in doubt, that’s what you call easing my way?”

Momentarily, Dís was struck dumb. She found her voice enough to stammer, “That...you _never_ \- I loved Víli, _you_ loved Víli and this is the first time you’ve - ”

“Did you?” Thorin was close now, close enough for her to smell the sweat that dripped down his face and feel the heat radiating off his fevered brow. “Did you love him? Would our folk call it _love_ that had you ever casting your eyes at Dwalin? That had you _rutting_ with him the other night like the Mannish _whore_ the townsfolk always claimed you were?”

The fragile reign Dís had on her temper snapped at last. She was a near match for her brother in height and breadth and strength. When she reared her fist back and struck him in the face with it, he went down upon the piles of gold. Thorin spat blood onto the treasure, wiping his mouth with an already bloody hand.

Trembling with rage she stood over him, shouting, “You don’t speak to me like that! Do you hear me? Not about him, not about _them!_ I’ve been at your side every day for a century, I know you, I’ve _helped_ you and you...you…”

He hadn’t gotten up, hadn’t given bellow for bellow or blow for blow. Thorin didn’t seem stunned or dumbfounded by the strike she’d landed against him. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the treasure around her. 

Dís sank to her knees before him and grabbed his wrists roughly, pulling him closer until they were nose to nose. “You’re not yourself,” she said, more quietly, brow creasing in worry, not in wrath. “You wouldn’t say such things to me. You wouldn’t shut Dwalin out when you’re upset, Thorin, you aren’t _thinking_ clearly.”

She needed to get him out of the damned treasury. He needed to rest, eat something, drink something. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d joined them for one of their paltry meals. It might not be a cure, but it could be a start.

But Thorin was taking his hands out of hers, trying to slip away even as he stumbled and fell again on his unsteady ground. 

“Why have you come here?” he snapped, as if he hadn’t noticed her before, for all he’d been saying to her.

“For _you,”_ she said, likewise struggling to rise. “You need to rest. If you’re going to talk to Bard again, you’ll need to sleep so you can damn well think straight.”

“Talk?” he asked, as if the word was foreign to him. “Talk - I’ll let my sword speak for me. They have shown they are beyond being spoken to.”

“They haven’t!” she exclaimed, suddenly desperate. “Bifur said it best, they haven’t come for us while we’re vulnerable, they don’t _want_ a fight! I can’t imagine it’s honor on their side that makes them wait ‘til Dáin arrives and they have a fair battle on their hands. He says you should talk to them again, try again, that they don’t know what they’re doing!”

“You would take the judgment of a war-addled, unlearned toymaker over mine?” Thorin asked, on his feet now, despite his quaking knees. “And you dare to speak of loyalty! You - you would turn me over to my enemies! You would _betray_ me as well!”

He was slipping away from her, retreating though he only turned away and did not stumble further. But he was leaving her nevertheless, closing himself off to her - if he would not listen to _her_ , Dís knew as Dwalin had known, as Bifur had known, he would not listen to anyone. 

“I would _never_ ,” she shouted, but the anger was rapidly fading from her voice, replaced with desperate pleading. “I would follow you wherever you go, you know I would, I _have!_ I will take arms and bleed and die in your war against these Men and Elves this minute if you bid me to. I will outfit my sons for battle and send them to fight to death for love of you, my brother, who are worth more to me than my riches and my life. I ask that you not demand this of me today. Not when there may not be cause.”

Thorin’s back was to her, he gave no sign of having heard a word of her impassioned plea. Since she was sixty years old she had hidden her tears from her brother, refused to let them fall where he could see them. They fell now.

“I ask you to reconsider - I am _begging_ you to reconsider.” 

And Dís did something remarkable then, something no one in the line of Durin had done since time immemorial, not to an enemy and certainly not to kin. She dropped to her knees and held her hands out in supplication. “Thorin, I beg you on my knees to soften your heart. On my _knees._ Please don’t do this.” 

He wasn’t looking at her. He still wasn’t looking at her. She wasn’t sure he’d really heard her and so she did the only thing she could think to recapture his attention. She spoke aloud his inner-name. 

Whether it was the tremor in her voice bringing back unwanted memories of a time long ago or the fact that she spoke a name which was not to be said aloud until the day of his funeral, Thorin started as if lightning struck, clutching at his chest like he was in pain, as though he had been cleft in twain. It was the feeling, the damnable unforgettable feeling of heartbreak. 

Thorin was at his sister’s side in a moment, pulling her to her feet. “Get up,” he said, his voice rough and thick with his own unshed tears. “Get up, please. Bend your knees to no one, myself least of all. Oh, Dís...namadith, I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

It could not be said who moved first, but as Dís’s hands clutched at his forearms and his pulled her hastily upright they were fumbling and falling into one another’s arms. 

“It’s this place,” he said, shutting his eyes against the glint and glare of gold all around them. “I can’t _think_ , I can hardly catch my breath…”

“Then come away,” Dís insisted, pulling him toward the door. Eyes still closed, Thorin obeyed, trusting his sister would not lead him astray. She waved away the crush of dwarves who rushed to them, her only thought to get Thorin as far from the treasury as possible. Away from the weapons of war placed on the battlements. Away from the place where he had so recently been betrayed.

And so they walked, through inky darkness and deserted streets, higher, but deeper into the rock. Dís did not know where she was leading him until she stood before the door itself, a mess of broken masonry and the intricate patterns of inlaid goldwork wrenched out; the clawmarks stood out visibly upon the stone. She did not know how she’d managed to find it, but there was a memory or an instinct deeper than stone-sense that guided her feet. 

“Look,” she said softly, shyly as a child voicing a small triumph. “Look what I’ve found.”

Thorin’s hand trailed down until his fingers interlaced with hers. He opened his eyes and caught his breath. Without speaking they walked around the fallen walls and caved-in door, in their own home for the first time in over one hundred years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Light at the end of the tunnel? Oncoming train? Maybe a bit of both, but you know who's awesome? Bifur. He should be King Under the Mountain.


	51. Chapter 51

When coming back to a once-familiar place after years of absence, it was common to feel everything was smaller than it had been. Dís did not suffer from such a distorted impression; after living so long in tents and in three small rooms, the apartments she stood in now seemed overwhelmingly large. 

Thorin pulled her forward, walking like one asleep, his face upturned and eyes wide open though he did not seem to be looking at anything in particular. Dís followed him to the mantle, huge and beautifully carved, she could see that even in the dark. When he opened the tinderbox and struck a spark, and lit an obliging candle. 

The entryway was marred by scourges from claws and burned black with smoke, but the sitting room beyond was intact, eerily so. As if the inhabitants had stepped out for a moment and would be back.

There was the armchair Dís remembered her father filling on long nights. The seat was worn and sagging in the middle, desperately in need of stuffing. There were scorch marks here too, on the arms. Small and round holes burned by the embers of his pipe. 

There was the sofa upon which she had lain and wrestled a hundred times was there, standing like a sentinel before the hearth. A book was abandoned on the table beside her father’s chair. Dís dropped Thorin’s hand and picked it up to examine it. It had been left, pages down and would not close properly. She squinted at the text, but could not read the words; it was written in the Common Tongue. 

The candlelight made the hollows of Thorin’s cheeks and eyes seem darker and more pronounced. Silently, he plucked the book from her hand, but he did not make any effort to read it. After half a moment he let the volume flutter from his hand to land on the floor. The sound of the book’s binding breaking was muffled by the carpet, thick and richly woven. 

Dís looked at Thorin warily. He held his face carefully reserved for a moment, but it was too great a fiction to maintain. Tears sprang to his eyes and he covered his face with his hand moaning, “This place is a tomb.”

What could she say in response? That he was wrong? That he hadn’t inherited a kingdom of ashes? 

Dís wrapped her arms around Thorin’s waist and lay her head on his shoulder. He held her in return, an unconscious gesture. He was heavy in her arms, sagging.

“Sleep,” she urged him. “Please, just rest for a few minutes, you’re half-dead on your feet.”

“I _can’t,”_ Thorin managed through a jaw held tense against tears and pain. “Not with our enemies at the gate. Not with an army marching to us. Not when there has been treachery in our midst, not - ”

“You can, you _must,”_ Dís insisted. “How are you meant to fight, to think at all if you don’t sleep or eat? Half an hour. I’ll wake you in half an hour.”

She was lying. Bad enough Thorin had been betrayed by their burglar, but by his sister as well? Yet Dís did not feel treacherous, she felt that she would do Thorin the greater disservice by letting him carry on as he was, half mad with panic and weariness. 

Anyway, how was she to know? The clocks were all wound down.

Thorin raised his head and stepped away from her, looking at the sofa as if he had never seen it’s like before and wasn’t sure what to do with it. Slowly, nervously, he lowered himself down. He’d slept there often as a boy, the last time he’d made use of it he fit almost perfectly. Now he was too broad to be completely comfortable, he had to curl his knees to lay upon it, but he found he was too tired to rise or even make himself more comfortable. 

From Dís’s point of view, it seemed her brother lost conscious more than he fell asleep. His face was lined and his expression troubled, but at least he was resting. She tried to tell herself it was a small victory. 

Exhausted herself, she sank down onto the floor beside him, leaning her back against the cushions, resting her head upon her brother’s curled knee. The candlelight flickered around her and as she rested, half dozing, she made out a hundred spectres in the gloom.

Her father coming in at the end of a long day, keys rattling in the lock - he had so many keys, shining and clanging against one another. He could open any door in the mountain. Her mother, coming in from her workshop in a rustle of coatskirts, bringing with her the smell of hot metal. Frerin’s slim shadow darting down the stairs, jumping the last three steps. How much she’d forgotten. How much she remembered. 

When Dís next opened her eyes, the room was dark and silent, save for Thorin’s snoring. Her back ached and her neck was stiff as she lifted herself onto her knees and looked down at him. The longer she stared the clearer his face became; almost unlined. Almost peaceful. He was deeply asleep, she had no idea how long she’d slept and had no desire to wake him yet. 

Silently, she rose from the floor and made her way to the mantle, groping until she found the tinderbox and another candle. When the light flared, Thorin did not move, not even to flinch behind his eyelids. 

She was loathe to leave him, even for an instant. What if he woke, alone? What if he was cross that she hadn’t awakened him as she promised?

But he would come looking for her, she realized. And an argument with her would keep him far from the treasurehouse that could only plague him with misery, far from the parapets and the sight of the camp of Men and Elves that would only infuriate him. Far from her sons who she tried, even now, to shield from their uncles’ black moods.

Dís bent to replace the book they’d left lying on the floor. It closed now that the spine was snapped, albeit unevenly. She placed it where her father had, wondering what he’d been thinking of on that last day. Was he reading for pleasure? Or for duty? She didn’t know and turned away for the book would give her no answers.

Restless, she walked off as quietly as she could, trying first the door that led either to her mother’s workshop or her father’s study. Locked. 

Thráin probably had his keys when they ran. Dís wasn’t sure why she wanted to see the old rooms, what she thought she would find, but it seemed important. Terribly important.

The next door she tried opened easily, without even groaning at the hinges. This was her mother’s workshop, the small forge fire long since gone cold, the water in the slack tub a viscous, oily black, nearly empty now with the passage of time. There were half-finished tasks laid out, never to be finished.

Dís walked through the room as if in a dream, thoughts flying in and out of her head, fluttering like moths. _Combs,_ she thought, fingers not quite brushing the delicate metal tines. They were tiny, she reflected, brow furrowing. They didn’t even span the palm of her hand.

Dís thought of her mother’s thick, golden unbound hair. Even as decoration, these would have been lost among the braids and loops she wove upon her head. The design etched upon them was delicate. She picked one up and ran her thumb over the surface. Snowflakes.

 _They were meant for me,_ she thought, letting the little comb drop from her hand as if it burned her. 

She stepped out of the room, shutting the door as swiftly and quietly as she could. Her mother hadn’t worked at all in the last year of her life. That probably contributed to her decline as much as anything. 

Thorin was still sleeping. Dís walked around him, her grip tightening on her candle. Then she ascended the stairs. 

The door to her parents’ room was flung wide open. Memories assaulted her here, but after touching that comb, realizing who it had been meant for, she felt curiously numb to recall her final moments in this place. The inside handle of the door was bent from how hard her mother had wrenched it, bashing it against the wall as she fled down the stairs, her daughter in her arms.

Their flight was blackness in Dís’s mind, Freya clasped her daughter so tightly against her she could not see, could hardly breathe. The air was hot and flashed red behind her eyelids once. She could smell smoke and the sickly-sweet scent of burning meat and hair. 

Shivering, she took a step over the threshold, retracing her mothers steps; one running away as fast as they could, the other tip-toeing tentatively back. 

The bed her parents’ shared was covered with a woven blanket, neatly made, waiting to welcome weary dwarves who would never return. The dressing table was covered with scattered jewelry, too small even for a dragon to have scented. Rings, bracelets, ear cuffs, brushes with strands of hair caught between the tines. 

She did not attempt to touch any of them, but she did run her fingertips lightly over the bedhangings, sagging on their rings. The cloth was still strong, the weave still tight. A credit to the skill of their race; even as their bodies rotted away, their work remained. 

Dís sank to the floor, placing the candle beside her as she dropped her head in her hands. She tried valiantly not to cry, but it was in vain for with every passing second that hazy time of _before_ became clearer and clearer. Memories flooded in, some chipped and fragmented, but there nevertheless. 

She used to stand upon the stool before the vanity mirror because she could not see her face if she sat. When Freya caught her at it, she’d sit her down upon the tabletop with her back to the glass so that she could patiently braid her daughter’s hair, allowing herself a measure of satisfaction for all she knew that Dís would ruin all her hard work in play as soon as she was out the door. 

Running into this room in the middle of the night, afraid of something and allowed, on rare occasions, to crawl in between her parents. More often her father would march her back to her own room, but he remained beside her until she was asleep again. At least, she did not remember him leaving the nursery. 

Involuntarily, her eyes slid to the door, half-open. That place she _did_ remember. It was where she had been when the horns and the screams sounded loudly enough to be heard through stone. It was there she might had died had her mother’s steps not been swift and sure. Freya stopped for nothing, looking forward, never back, as she ran for her and her daughter’s life. 

A grunt sounded from below in this dark and lifeless place, making her jump. 

“Dís?”

She rose at once, stepping out onto the landing. Thorin stood below, rubbing kinks out of his neck, twisting his back. He didn’t look any better than he had before he lay down, but sleep-addled confusion was better than blind rage. 

He squinted up at her in the dim light, frowning. “What are you doing up there?”

“I don’t really know,” she admitted. “Looking. And don’t ask me what for.”

He didn’t. Thorin dragged himself over to the staircase, laying one hand against the rail. His fingers tightened against the stone and he tilted his chin up, looking at her. His expression was haunted. 

Dís tilted her head toward the doorway of their parents’ bedroom. Thorin hesitated, but followed her inside, eyes darting around taking in the tarnished brass lampstands, dark now, their oil depleted. The portraits on the wall, grimy from being shut up so long. Unlike Dís, he did touch the small jewels left on the dressing table, but put them down very quickly. He seemed to just want to assure himself that they were real. 

It was Thorin who crossed the room and entered the nursery. He had been living in the Guards’ quarters the day the drake came. That room held no haunting memories for him. Dís did not know what he had been doing that day. She never asked. 

Gathering her courage, she followed her brother inside, standing on the threshold, silently taking it in. Two beds, small, sized for children, one against the far wall, one closer to their parents’ room. That one was hers. Had been hers. Dolls and animals made of fur and stuffing were lovingly sat before the pillows, like tiny guards. 

They had names once, all of them, but she’d forgotten. 

She tore her eyes away and looked at Frerin’s bed with its dark blue coverlet, pushed slightly askew. There was a little cloth face, a ram with spiraling stitched horns hastily shoved under the pillow, peering at her with black button eyes. He probably thought he was getting too old for toys, at least in the daylight, but he kept the ram close by, on hand at night. Just in case.

It was nothing Frerin ever told her, but something Dís intuitively knew, having raised two children who’d done much the same with their own things, eschewing them during the day, retrieving them from under pillows or under the bed when darkness fell upon the household. Goose, Fíli’s little wolf pup lived in his truck for years, but he had only given him away to one of Bombur’s children when they left the Ered Luin. And with a caveat, to look after him. Hold on to him. And when you come East, bring him with you, safe and sound. 

Kíli jokingly told Balur that he’d have to wrestle Fíli for the honor of keeping Goose forever. Balur smiled toothily up at him, hugging the worn toy to his chest and informed Fíli that he’d put up a good fight. 

Frerin hadn’t the luxury of leaving his childhood things by choice. Maybe that was why he’d never objected to sharing a bedroll with his younger sister. He was too old to weep about it, but too young not to be afraid of being alone in the dark. 

Above the mantle, darkened with age, was a portrait Dís did not remember sitting for. Little wonder, for there was a sleepy-looking infant who had to be her, sitting in the lap of a slender, blue eyed, solemn-looking little boy. Thorin, of course, though he had never been so young even in her earliest memories. Beside him, with one hand positioned on Thorin’s arm was a younger child, round faced and smiling. He was the only one of them smiling. 

She’d thought her brothers - both of them - were so big and brave and strong, but they’d only been children themselves when they ran. Frightened children. 

Brave too, she reflected. Thorin working tirelessly alongside their father and grandfather to feed them and keep them safe. Frerin did the same, when he was a bit older, but all the while he tried to keep their spirits up, vital caretaking in itself.

If he had lived, she wondered countless times over the years, what would have been different? Some things surely would have been. Thorin would have been happier, of that she was sure. She did her best, but it wasn’t good enough. She couldn’t make him laugh like Frerin could. Some days the best she could manage was staying out of his way. If Frerin was here, would Thorin have locked himself in the treasurehouse? Would he have rounded on her, calling her a whore? Would she have made the choices that made him call her a whore?

Thorin’s hand brushed her cheek and she realized she’d started crying again.

Dís brushed his hand and her tears away. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“No,” Thorin said, dropping his hand, eyes cutting away from her. “Don’t be. It’s only...well, you haven’t cried in years.”

“Of course I have,” Dís snapped, more harshly than she meant to. “Just nowhere you could see.”

Thorin swallowed hard and turned away, when next he spoke, he addressed his comments to the floor. “I’m sorry you’ve been left with such an untrustworthy brother.”

“That’s _not_ what I - Thorin, no,” she sighed, taking his arm before he could leave. He was always trying to leave. “I just didn’t want to trouble you. You’ve troubles enough already without me.”

“Never,” Thorin said, his voice taking on a fierceness he hadn’t exhibited since she pulled him out of the treasurehouse. “You’ve _never_ added to my troubles. I know - I _know_ your faith in me lies on a crumbling foundation. I know I’ve never proved myself worth of - ”

“Stop!” she insisted, shaking his arm with a bruising grip. “Stop! No one thinks that, Thorin! No one thinks that but _you!”_

Hesitantly, he raised his eyes to her face before dropping them again, shaking his head. “If that were true, you would not think me so weak in mind that I would be undone by the sight of my sister’s tears. I am a paltry comfort. Not like Frerin. I know you wished he was here, rather than I - ”

“I wish he was _here,”_ she agreed. “But not _instead_ of you! I wish you were both here - s’hands, I wish Ama was here and Adad and Udad and Umad and Uma and Auntie Frigga. And Balin and Dwalin’s parents and Hervor’s mother and Heidrek and all the rest of them! I wish none of this had ever happened, but I wouldn’t…”

Dís swallowed hard, her next words coming so slowly and so harshly she practically choked on them, “I wish none of it had ever happened. But if...if some god descended and told me that I’d have to trade _you_ for them...that I could never do. Because I _love_ you. You never needed to reclaim our kingdom for that. You never needed to lead our people from despair and poverty for that. You did it all anyway, but you did it because you are a good king. But you never needed to be a good king to have my love, you’ve had it all the time and you’ll have it forever. Whether you want it or not.”

She’d startled him with her words, that much was clear from the way his arm tensed beneath the unforgiving clutch of her fingers and his eyes widened, as much with horror as with awe. _“Want_ it? Dís, how can you say that? All these years I’ve been trying - ”

“No, no you’re not listening!” she shouted in frustration. “You’ve never had to _try._ You’ve never had to _do_ anything! Whether or not we reclaim or not we reclaim our place here, whether or not we die defending it, whether or not you _ever_ sit on the throne, I will love you now and always love you. Because I always have.”

There were tears in Thorin’s eyes now, but neither of them made a motion to brush them away as they trickled down his face, disappearing into his beard. 

_“How?”_ he asked raggedly. “How can you love me when I have so much loathing for myself?”

As it had often in the past, Dís’s heart broke for him. Always she thought if Thorin set aside one one-hundredth of the love and care he bestowed upon his family and his people for himself, he would profit by it. Ever he put himself last, held himself to impossibly high exacting standards. And when he fell short, he punished himself. Whatever cruelties he spoke to her in moments of unthinking anger, Dís knew they paled in comparison to the litany of self-hate that occupied her brother’s thoughts nearly every minute of every day.

She wished there was someone she could blame. Their father, for being so stern and cold to him. Their grandfather for dying and leaving him heir to an exiled and broken kingdom when he’d been so young and so afraid. Their mother for reminding him over and over again, in the Ered Luin, that no matter what he did, nothing could recreate the splendor of Erebor and so Thorin would always fail.

But it was none of that, not entirely. There was a sickness of a kind in her brother, that had been burning him from the inside out the whole of his life and she could do nothing about it, but try to beat back the flames.

Without thinking she had him in her arms again, her lips pressed hard against his cheek as if she could make him feel the love she had for him by sheer force. 

“You’re my brother,” she whispered thickly, unable to say any more. 

Thorin’s arms went loosely around her waist and he bowed his head so that it rested upon her shoulder. One sob wracked him, then another and another until they were kneeling on the floor and he was weeping so heartily he could not draw breath. 

“I’m sorry,” he gasped as he had in the treasurehouse. “I’m so sorry. This wasn’t meant...it shouldn’t be like this.”

She did not know what he was apologizing for. For arousing the anger of the Men and Elves. For not slaying the dragon himself. For swearing to go to war when he only ever promised that they would come home. Or just as likely, for living when so many others had died. Others who he thought worthier of living; worthier of being loved. 

But it was too late for apologies. They could not move back, only forward. Yet Dís did not move at all. She knelt, surrounded by the detritus of the past, held her brother, closed her eyes and prayed to anyone who could hear her.

_Help us. Help him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DAMMIT THORIN EVERYONE LOVES YOU NOW GO EAT SOMETHING AND GET IT TOGETHER.


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul Word of the Day - "melhekhel" means king of all kings.

When they emerged, red-eyed and weary from the place that was once their home, Dwalin was waiting for them. Thorin opened his mouth, but Dwalin held up a hand and shook his head. Whatever it was Thorin wanted to say, an apology or an affirmation of his rage, Dwalin wanted nothing to do with it.

“Thought you might’ve come this way,” he said evenly, tone and expression betraying nothing of his thoughts, but Dís saw from the way he held his shoulders and the stiffness of his fingers that he was tense as a drawn bowstring. “It’s what I told - ”

“Mam!” Fíli called, emerging from the looming shadows, running at her, then stopping suddenly when he saw Thorin.

Kíli was slightly braver - or more foolhardy, it was sometimes difficult to tell. “Uncle!” he called, skidding to a halt before them. Without a hint of fear he grasped Thorin’s sleeve and said, “You’ve got to come see what’s been left for us!”

Thorin looked at him warily, then turned questioning eyes on Dwalin.

“I told the others to wait ‘til you got back,” he said evasively. “But I’m sure they didn’t heed me.”

“Didn’t heed you about what?” Dís asked, but Fíli seized her arm and tugged her forward.

“Fish!” he said, in a wondering voice as if he couldn’t believe it. “A basketful! Kíli and I were posted by the secret door with Nori - he said since Bi…since the Lake-Men might know of it, we ought to place a guard. It was all quiet for the longest time, but then we heard knocking and - ”

“And Fíli went to fetch you but we didn’t know where you’d gone,” Kíli interrupted, finding his brother’s retelling altogether too slow for his taste. He hadn’t let go of Thorin’s sleeve and Thorin allowed himself to be led, evidently not trusting himself to speak or act on his own. “So Nori had this great big sword and I had my bow and we threw the door open - but no one was there! Just this basket of fish sitting, so fresh you couldn’t even smell ‘em! How’s that, then?”

How was that indeed, Dís mused. Her expression mimicked Thorin’s and she asked, “Poisoned?”

“Hard to say,” Dwalin shrugged. “Aren’t many Mannish poisons that’d do a dwarf in, but - ”

“Have their lines changed?” Thorin asked, startling them all by breaking his silence abruptly. He raised his eyes and passed a hand over his face, looking pale and drawn, but his eyes no longer burned.

Dwalin shook his head. “Not an inch moved in either direction. But you can smell the fish they’re roasting from the trea...well. If they’re poisoned, we’ll know, Nori was ready to sit down and light a fire in the armory.”

Thorin didn’t reply to that, but he allowed himself to be dragged along by his nephew who was chattering at his side, hardly pausing for breath. “Odd, eh? I don’t know how they couldn’ve done it, whoever it was. We looked quick and all, but there wasn’t a soul about, not on the ledge, not climbing back down the Mountain. Queer, eh? What were you off doing? Mister Dwalin knew right where to find you - uncanny, I said. It’s a maze, this place, bigger than I ever thought it would be, isn’t it enormous, Fíli?”

Fíli was looking at Thorin as if he was afraid his uncle was about to start screaming again and threatening death, but Thorin was subdued, almost docile. As if the fight had gone out of him. Dís looked on, just as nervously as her son; she didn’t know what was better, her brother’s rage or her brother’s silence.

“It’s enormous,” Fíli said faintly.

Kíli started up again, theorizing about who might have brought the fish - they couldn’t have _flown_ , could they? Unless the ravens were sympathetic to their plight, but the few who remained in the aviary didn’t seem to be, probably because there hadn’t been any dwarves to feeed them or tend their nests in over a century…

“Mam,” Fíli asked quietly, arching his neck back and walking on his toes to whisper in her ear, “where’d you go?”

“Home,” she replied, then shrugged when Fíli’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “What’s left of it. The place we lived. I thought he needed a lie-down.”

The confusion cleared and Fíli nodded. He’d always taken his uncle’s fits of black moods harder than his brother. Kíli was always determined to cheer Thorin up by whatever means necessary, but Fíli was more inclined to stay well away until he came round.

“Did it help?” he asked.

Again, Dís shrugged, “He slept.”

Fíli swallowed thickly and looked at the bent line of his uncle’s slumped shoulders. Aye, sometimes he did sleep. For days and days he stayed in bed, not eating, not drinking. As if he was already dead and laid in stone. That _terrified_ Fíli, more than any shouting or blustering anger could do. It was as if Thorin had given up on everything when he acted so empty. As if there wasn’t anything to get up for.

No wonder Kíli had him by the shirtcuff. Despite their disparate reactions to their uncle’s melancholy, they were both equally afraid that one day he would disappear.

The smell of cooking fish grounded them in worldlier concerns for the moment. All their stomachs rumbled and their mouths watered when they beheld the sight of their companions holding fish before the flames of a small fire, turning them over and over again in their fingertips.

Balin stood apart and broke away as soon as he heard the others approaching. “All seems well, for the moment,” he said, looking Thorin up and down in naked concern. “You ought to eat, laddie.”

Thorin seemed about to protest, but Kíli refused to let him go. “Come on, then!” he said cheerfully. “If it’s poisoned, at least we’ll go with full stomachs.”

“You’ve been paying too much mind to young Nori,” Dwalin said, a hint of a scold in his voice. He got around Thorin’s other side, following close enough that although he wasn’t _pushing_ Thorin closer to the fire, if Thorin stopped moving, he would have been flush up against Dwalin’s chest.

Beside Dís, Fíli tugged her sleeve as Kíli had done Thorin’s. “Mam,” he said uncertainly. “You haven’t eaten anything either.”

Dís put an arm around his shoulder, tugging him close and kissing his hair. He didn’t wiggle away or make a squeak of protest. His arm snaked about her waist and he squeezed her tight, as wary and nervous as he had been when they were all starving in the forest.

Thorin was made to sit by Bifur who held up an already cooked fish for him to take; Bifur refused to rise and Thorin had to sink down beside him, Kíli flopping onto the floor so quickly Dís was worried he was going to do himself a harm. Kíli’s dramatics nearly caused Thorin to topple over so he sat himself down out of necessity. Dwalin sat beside him at once, a hand braced behind, presumably to snag Thorin if he tried to break away from Kíli.

The door to the treasurehouse was closed and the sky was dark over the field where the Elves and Men lay in wait...for what? They did not charge forward to lay siege, they did not retreat back to their underground dwellings or their ruined town. They were waiting, but for what?

“Mam?” Fíli asked, giving her arm a shake. “Coming?”

“Aye,” she said, but she couldn’t summon a smile for him. Not when so much was still uncertain.

Bofur budged up and made a space for her, raising his eyebrows and making a face that he seemed to think she would interpret without words. Dís shrugged helplessly, but he drew closer and passed her a fish.

“Bilbo,” he whispered. “Got to be, don’t it? Who else is so quick and so quiet?”

Dís looked at Thorin quickly, in alarm, but he wasn’t listening to them, instead he was quietly picking the meat off between the bones, putting it in his mouth one painfully tiny piece at a time. He had a hard time eating when he was like this, Dís knew from experience. Sometimes he choked.

“Why would he, though?” Fíli whispered back, just as quietly. “Why hand us over and keep us fed? What are they thinking? What are they planning?”

A sigh overhead made them all look up. Balin stood over them, pale-faced with dark circles under his eyes. Dís wondered when he last slept and moved over so he could at least sit by her.

“I do not believe that they have a plan,” Balin murmured. Then, snorted ruefully. “No more than we have.”

“Dáin’s coming,” Fíli pointed out.

“Aye,” Balin sighed again, closing his eyes. “Dáin is coming.”

They were quiet, but for the crackling of the fire and the sounds of chewing. They didn’t fall upon the food as they had done that night in Bilbo’s pantry. This was no feast, even if it came upon the eve of a battle. No songs were sung; they might have been mourning the dead already.

Until Bofur started humming. Idly at first, purposeless noise from one who hated silence. It was a good while before Dís recognized the tune.  
It was Bombur who started singing. No one stopped him, or hushed him. He had too beautiful a voice to silence.

_“Fading away like stars in the morning_  
 _Losing their light in the glorious sun._  
 _Thus would be pass from this world and its toiling_  
 _Only remembered for what we have done._

_Only remembered, only remembered_  
 _For what we have done._  
 _Thus would we pass from this earth and its toiling_  
 _Only remembered for what we have done.”_

The others gradually took up the tune; all but Thorin who sat in contemplative stony silence, his face betraying nothing of what he was thinking.

* * *

 

When the fire died away and evening fell in earnest a small group of them sat on the battlements, watching the smoke from the fires of the armies’ encampment curl into the air. It was a cold, clear night and the moonlight made the dwarves’ eyes flash white in the darkness.

“They don’t retreat,” Dwalin observed, his back pressed against cold stone. “They don’t come closer. They’re the most mannerly army I’ve known, waiting ‘til we’ve got reinforcements before they strike.”

Glóin shifted in his place a little, but he didn’t get far - Kíli had fallen asleep against his shoulder and he wasn’t inclined to wake the lad. Fíli valiantly tried to stay awake, but he’d given in to exhaustion and lay with his head propped up on Dís’s legs. “Could be they’re cowards.”

“Even with five-hundred…” Balin trailed off and no one needed him to complete the thought, they all knew it would likely be a losing battle. A long battle, with hard losses on both sides. A battle they had all seen before and hoped never again to see in their lifetimes.

 _There is time,_ Bifur signed. His dark eyes cut sideways to Thorin, who sat beside Dwalin. He hadn’t spoken at all since they finished their meal, he was like one sleepwalking, going where he was led, but all the while lost in his own mind.

“Aye,” Balin agreed, looking at Thorin directly. “There is. Thorin - ”

Thorin snapped up as if roused from slumber. He got to his feet, shaking off Dwalin’s hands that reached for him. He retreated away from them all, down the stairs, into the blackness, stepping around their sleeping companions.

Fíli’s eyes flew open when Dís pushed him aside to follow at Thorin’s heels. He was making haste to the treasurehouse and she caught the huge door before it could slam shut, following him inside.

The torches burned low and the gold before them shone red in the half-light.

“Talk to me.” She meant to speak quietly, cajolingly, but it came out like a bark. “What are you thinking?”

She fully expected to be thrown out and braced herself for the charge. When Thorin did not round on her, she waited for him to shout, to scream and curse her again. But he did not. Instead, he sank down to the floor, on his knees, fingers tight upon his legs, head bowed forward. His long, lank hair slipped over his shoulders and the nape of his neck was bared, pale white and vulnerable.

“I am thinking that I am a fool,” he said bleakly. “That we came all this way for nothing.”

“How can you say that?” Dís asked, crouching beside him, laying a warm hand against his back. “When the dragon is gone and dead at last - ”

“Not by our hands,” he shook his head defeatedly. “We escaped the trolls through the wiles of a halfling. We were only spared torture and death due to the timely arrival of the wizard. And the great bane of our people was brought to death by the bow of a Man. The Pale Orc still roams the wilds and I...in all my years, I have done _nothing.”_

“That’s isn’t true,” Dís said, all her ire melting away as her heart ached for her brother, so quick to see fault in himself. She thought of her sons, who she ever praised, who she kissed and held even when they wriggled away and rolled their eyes. Just in case. Just so there was never a time in their memory when they turned to her and she wasn’t there. Just so there was never a day when she _agreed_ that they were too old for affection, too strong to ask for help. To ensure that they never truly believed it themselves. “You’ve done _so_ much and you don’t realize. You led the last charge against the Orcs at Azanulbizar. You brought us West where our folk made good lives for themselves. You raised my sons with me - ”

“All of that - barring Fíli and Kíli - all of that I did without honor,” Thorin shook his head, shoulders trembling beneath Dís’s hand. “Without strength. I closed my mouth and nodded my head like a puppet on strings. Promised we’d keep our heads down, not cause trouble, not turn beggars. I have borne a thousand insults and curses, for myself, our family, our people, to keep them fed. I have squandered all my pride to do this. I thought...I thought those days were done.”

Dís crouched beside him, not speaking. She did not know what to say, if she argued, Thorin would not believe her. He never had, but she’d never given up trying to convince him that his life was not something he had to endeavor to deserve.

“The Arkenstone is something that is unquestionably _ours,”_ Thorin gritted out behind clenched teeth. “Something that, at last, after all this time, we need not beg, plead, or bargain for. And now…”

“But you needn’t go begging,” Dís said softly, lacing her fingers with his to make him unclench his fists. “Request a second chance to parley. Balin doesn’t think they know what the Arkenstone is. They think it’s a diamond you fancy.”

Thorin groaned. Dís squeezed his hand hard and chanced to whisper, “He apologized.”

Thorin’s face grew hard. “I don’t want to hear you speak of him. His apologies mean nothing, the deed is done.”

That was what Dís thought, when she railed at him outside the hidden door, but now...hope, Bifur said. There was still hope. “Who do you think it was left food for us?”

“Dís - ”

“No. Listen. _Think._ If he was nothing but a traitor and a liar, he wouldn’t have cared whether we lived or died. He’d have led Bard and Thranduil and the rest to us by trickery - you know he’s got an uncanny way about him, sneaking through the Elvenking’s dungeon. He could have turned that skill against us, but he used it to bring us meat. That’s something, isn’t it?”

“One more day to live,” Thorin said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t mean much.”

“Doesn’t it?” she asked. When one had been on the brink of losing everything - truly losing _everything_ , as they had been so many times - one more day could mean more than anything in the world.

Thorin’s shoulders sagged. He let out a sigh that echoed over the sea of gold before them. Then Thorin stood, lifting Dís up with him. He did not drop her hand, but kept her walking beside him, like an anchor. Before they walked through the doors, Thorin turned to stare once more at the great wealth of their people.

“It is ours,” he said quietly, but fervently.

“It is,” Dís nodded, pressing his hand with both of hers, lifting it to kiss his fingers. “And yours to decide what’s to be done with it.”

“Udad would never - ”

“We don’t know,” Dís insisted. “We don’t know what he would or wouldn’t have done. He’s not here anymore, _you_ are. This kingdom isn’t his anymore, for our caretaking. It’s yours. And the decision is _yours,_ nadadel. Melhekhel.”

Thorin closed his eyes. The appellation did not seem to sooth him; on the contrary, he looked as pained as he had when he saw the Pale Orc come toward him, a dreadful near-impossibility bearing down on him with a mace.

Then he opened his eyes. He kissed his sister on the brow and steeled himself as he had when he ran threw flames into the maw of a creature he could not hope to best. Dís dropped her hands from his and together they opened the doors of the treasurehouse. Balin stood on the other side, calmly, expectantly.

“I need pen and ink,” Thorin said shortly. “Quickly. Before I change my mind.”

A raven was dispatched to send the missive out. They lost sight of its dark wings against the blue-black of the pre-dawn sky, but Kíli and Fíli who had awakened to watch Balin and Thorin slowly write out the words, starting and stopping a dozen times before it was finally finished, stared determinedly out anyway, eyes squinting against the wind.

The sky grew lighter by the moment. They saw the raven circling overhead, endlessly. It seemed to be looking for something - then it dove down and Kíli cried out when he saw the bird land upon the brim of a tall, pointed hat. Gandalf had come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are beginning to turn around! At last! Credit for the song goes to Dr. Horatius Bonar who wrote the original words, the arrangement I'm thinking of is the one arranged by John Tams for the play _War Horse._


	53. Chapter 53

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning for discussion of suicide at the end.**

Bard had little experience with negotiation and parley. What he had was anger and despair in equal measure to make strong his voice in defiance of dwarven greed. The little life his people had built for themselves lay in ashes and ruin. They had put their trust in the dwarves and by the dwarves they had been left homeless. Oh yes, he wanted a blood price, but as the hours turned to days and now to weeks, his fear was beginning to overcome his wrath.

The destruction of Lake-town was that of homes and goods more than lives. Bard’s own family had survived intact, but he was not foolish enough to believe that he or his people were lucky enough to survive a beast and a war waged right on its heels. Even if they won, how could they rebuild? How could they survive the winter? They had food enough, but little fuel and less shelter. Even if by some miracle the army of Men and Elves laid waste to the Dwarves and there were none to claim the wealth of the Mountain, what sort of victory would that be?

As Bard himself contemptuously reminded Thorin, no one could eat gold.

If he thought that the Elvenking would shelter and clothe his people for a season, Bard would never have agreed to this second parley, but he had nearly as little faith in the steadfastness of Elves than he did of Dwarves. They provided healing and aid for the wounded victims of Smaug’s final stand, but how long would they tarry aboveground? Would they even raise their longbows against the Lonely Mountain?

When Thorin’s letter had come, all the camp was a-twitter with wonder. Was it a trick? What could he have meant in sending it?

Alfrid openly scoffed at the idea that the dwarven king wanted an honest parley.

“That dwarf’ll no sooner have you standing before him than he’ll stab you in the chest, mark me,” he warned Bard. “Wait for their army, then stand against them. We have Elves, haven’t we? And a wizard - ”

It was the wrong thing to say. The redheaded Captain of the Guard of the Elvenking, Tauriel, stood before him, eyes flashing with a dangerous light.

“Take care how you speak!” she hissed. “We are not the playthings of Men that we will take orders from _you.”_

“Peace, Tauriel,” Thranduil said softly. Throughout the negotiations - if one could call them that, for all the world it seemed nothing more productive in Bilbo’s eyes than a lot of squawking and bluster - Thranduil remained aloof. Rarely did he speak and more seldom still did he offer council. He had come, so he said, to strengthen Bard’s claim for aid for the Men of the Lake.

“Look not to me to fatten your ranks, Bard,” the Elvenking said in his deep, steady voice. “Though we will defend you, we will not idly kill for you. Long will I tarry ere I begin this war for gold.”

In the end, it was Gandalf who persuaded Bard to hear Thorin out.

“There is evil in this world, but it is not in that Mountain,” the wizard said. “Not any longer. But there grows a threat more dangerous and more terrible even than Smaug. And I say to you now that if you cannot face it together, you will hasten a greater era of destruction and decay than could be wrought by dragonfire.”

Bilbo had known Gandalf for almost half a century, but he had not know the wizard to change. No matter how many years had passed between visits or how many miles they walked upon the road, the wizard seemed ever the same. Old, without being frail. Careworn without being a shambles. But there was a darkness as deep as the sea in his blue eyes. A darkness that made them seem different than they had when he left them at the forest gate, when the late summer sun still warmed the evenings. It was winter here and the light in Gandalf’s eyes was fading.

Bard was too canny not to heed him. He sent word that he would agree to Thorin’s request and trust that the dwarf’s words were meant honestly. Now they met in the cold light of dawn as the shadows retreated in the coming light, a Mountain at Thorin’s back and an army at Bard’s.

Not since that first night in his kitchen at Bag End had Bilbo felt his companions to be so utterly foreign, so utterly _dwarven_ than he did as they approached him now.

It was only Thorin and Balin - Thorin alone agreed to step out of the mountain, with one companion, if Bard would do the same. It was only natural that he would pick Balin to accompany him. Bard picked Gandalf. Bilbo was not, strictly speaking, meant to be there - but what was the harm if nobody knew?

As if in defiance of Bard’s denial of Thorin’s claim, he was dressed regally. It was a credit to dwarven craftsmanship that the long, richly furred coat of deepest blue had not gone threadbare or moth-eaten in the intervening century. It was trimmed with golden embroidery and Thorin’s hands were bedecked with rings and about his chest hung a golden chain. Even crownless, he looked every inch a king.

Balin too wore robes trimmed with fur and bedecked with gems that glittered faintly. At his side was a leather satchel, too thin to hold a weapon, though Bard eyed it cautiously, as if expecting the dwarf to heave forth an axe to chop him in half the moment he got close enough.

It was Balin who spoke first. His voice, though not friendly, was not unkind either, “We thank you for agreeing to our terms to open negotiations between our peoples. We have not come to beg or to fight, but to speak. We hope you will extend us the same courtesy.”

Bard’s nostrils flared.

 _“We,”_ he began, but Gandalf stepped between Bard and Balin, extending his open hand to the latter.

“We come in good faith,” he said, giving Balin’s hand a firm shake. He stepped back, looking between Bard and Thorin expectantly, clearly expecting them to repeat the gesture.

Balin coughed once and Thorin stepped toward Bard, his arm held stiffly away from him as if he was thrusting with a sword, though, good as his word, he was unarmed. Bard met him halfway with extreme reluctance and they both let go of one another’s hands almost as soon as they’d let them touch.

“What is it you _need?”_ Thorin asked, imbuing the word ‘need’ with a particular significance.

“Supplies,” Bard replied shortly. “Rebuilding. We’ve food enough, fish from the lake and game from the forest. And grain that wasn’t too badly burned. But most of the houses burned or were crushed. The Elves have given us aid with healing our wounded.”

“We are gratified to hear it,” Balin said as Thorin ground his teeth together and looked away, staring at the hills beyond Bard’s back.

Bilbo wondered if he was remembering wandering those same hills with his wounded people. If he was, the hobbit was sure that Thorin too remembered that Thranduil never offered healing to his people. He winced and held his breath, waiting for Thorin to explode into anger, but he did not.

“Your wife and children,” Thorin said suddenly, looking back at Bard. “Did they - ”

“They live,” Bard said shortly. “Others do not.”

Thorin nodded grimly. “We are willing - _I_ am willing to give you the aid you require. You need labor. That we can supply - and pay for from our treasury.”

“How?” Bard demanded. “You are fourteen dwarves and your people, from what I have been told, live six months’ journey from here.”

“That is not so,” Balin said reasonably. “Our kinsman, Dáin Ironfoot hastens now from the Iron Hills - ”

“With an army,” Bard spat bitterly. “To kill us, not to labor for us. It’s warriors you’ve summoned here, don’t pretend it’s not.”

“They’re both,” Thorin snapped, bristling. “Warriors and masons and bricklayers and more. We are Dwarves. Our knowledge is the knowledge of destruction and creation, equally.”

“Don’t spout posy at me, I’ve no patience for it,” Bard said warningly, but Gandalf spoke before his passion was too much roused.

“He speaks nothing more than the truth,” the wizard said. “Dwarves are as cunning in craft as they are at war. You would be overhasty, Bard to spurn such a generous offer.”

“Generous,” Bard folded his arms and frowned. “What do _they_ know of generosity? I told them what would happen if they woke that dragon and they could not see beyond their own _greed_ to - ”

“What ought we have done?” Thorin asked, stepping close, close enough to strike Bard, but his hands remained balled at his fists. “Turned round and gone back, defeated and disgraced? Left that _thing_ to our kingdom? Your forefathers might have contented themselves with filth and fish, but we have never learnt to love fullering and open skies.”

“Dwarves learn nothing, from what I’ve heard,” Bard bent his neck to stare Thorin in the face. “You can’t be grateful for your lives, can you? It wasn’t enough for you to escape from that inferno, you had to go _back_ into that mountain again, _knowing_ what was in that rock!”

If Bard meant to accuse Thorin of something, his words found no mark. Bilbo held his breath, waiting for Thorin to scream, to strike out at Bard, or at the very least turn on his heel and storm back into the Mountain awaiting Dáin’s army, but he did none of that.

“I knew. I would die for her,” Thorin said simply, raising his eyes, but not his chin. “Ever have I been willing to lay down my life for my kingdom; gladly.”

Bard’s brow furrowed in confusion, then he turned his head and spat as if ridding his mouth of a bad taste. “Dwarves and their gold,” he growled.

“What’s done is done,” Balin said. “We offer you the promise of aid in rebuilding your homes. Lake-town, if you like, and the city of Dale, if it suits you, for we acknowledge that _some_ of the dragon’s hoard was looted from that city. We will contract with you. The dwarves of the Iron Hills will contract with us. All particulars will be settled - if you return the Arkenstone.”

Bard’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, but his mouth was a thin line of resignation. “You want the Arkenstone in exchange for your services.”

“No,” Balin said, his voice smoothly covering a growl that issued from Thorin’s throat. The dwarven king’s knuckles were very white. “You misunderstand me. We require the return of the Arkenstone before we will devise any such contract. We require the return of the Arkenstone before we will consider you anything but our enemies.”

He said it almost pleasantly. His tone was that of an experienced teacher, gently correcting a student who had gone some question or other the wrong way round. But there was no compromise in his eyes and his back stiffened as he spoke, readying himself for some return blow.

“And if I refuse?” Bard asked, looking over his shoulder at the two armies camped behind him.

“Then we have come in vain,” Thorin said, his jaw stiff and teeth grinding together. “The Arkenstone is _ours._ You do not know what it is. I will forgive your mistake only _once_. If you keep it from me, I will show you no mercy in the days to come.”

Bard looked to Gandalf for a word of help, of guidance, but the wizard had nothing to say. He was looking at Thorin from under the brim of his hat, it hid all of his face save for his long grey beard.

“What is it, then?” Bard asked. “You say we do not know what it is. Does it have...some enchantment over it? Some hidden power? What _is_ it that you would go to war for it?”

“It is ours,” Thorin replied, as if there was nothing more that could be said about it.

Dís told Bilbo that in giving the Arkenstone over to Bard, he had consigned them all to war. Bofur said it was not his to give, that it was their _gift_ from someone, but neither had said whom. Keeping secrets, as the legends said, was more important to dwarvenkind than preserving their lives. Hobbits were not as Dwarves; Bilbo did not care what the stone was, if he ever had. He only ever wanted to use it to prevent more death. But it was out of his hands now.

Tears tracked their way silently down his face and his heart pounded in his chest. Why had he taken it? How could he _not_ have taken it? He had been so afraid, watching his friends search for it without rest, as if it meant more than their lives. He was horrified to learn that it did.

Bilbo would never understand. Neither, it seemed, would Bard. But neither of them were Dwarves. And their little lives of fish and docks and gardens and pantries meant more to them than glittering gems. More even than the treasure of Erebor.

“Very well,” Bard said, a tense moment later. “You will have your stone back, for all the good it will do you. _If_ I have your word that you will make all due reparations for my people.”

Thorin let out a long shuddering breath.

“You have my word,” he said and this time, when he extended his hand, Bard grasped it strongly. “But I must have it.”

“You shall!” Bilbo exclaimed, he could not help himself. He’d torn the ring from his finger and ran toward them, stopping short of Gandalf who gazed down at him with open astonishment. “You shall! Bard, please!”

But Bard reached into the pocket of his coat and removed a large, round, cloth-wrapped object. Without ceremony, he shoved it in Thorin’s hands, hasty to be rid of it.

Thorin unwrapped the stone with shaking fingers. The gem glittered bright as the stars as soon as the light hit it, the twinkling lights reflecting in Thorin’s eyes as he stared at it in something close to reverence. Beside him, Balin caught his breath and closed his eyes, murmuring brief words in the harsh tongue that none of the others could understand.

The Arkenstone was beautiful, but to them that was all it was.

Thorin did not wrap the stone again, but placed it in some hidden pocket of his coat, next to his heart. He did not thank Bard for the return of the Arkenstone, he did not seem to see the need.

“Now we may speak,” he said, but Gandalf shook his head.

“Now _I_ must speak,” the wizard said gravely. “Would that I did not.”

* * *

 

When Thorin and Balin returned the sky was turning orange with the setting sun and the Dwarves clustered round the secret door, their faces painted different shades of emotion, some wary, some hopeful, some resigned, some fearful, but they all turned with quiet dread when the door turned on its grinding hinges behind them.

“Do you have - ” Dís asked, but before the words came out of her mouth Thorin removed the stone from his coat. It caught the torchlight and illuminated the whole chamber.

Eyes closed and prayers were murmured. Fíli, Kíli, and Ori, who had no memory of the Arkenstone’s beauty, drew closer to stare at it and Bofur, Bombur, and Bifur, miners all with sharper stone-sense than the rest of them put together, looked at it with all reverence.

“Thank the Maker,” Dís sighed. “It’s home at last.”

Thorin nodded, but there was no triumph on his face. He passed a hand over his eyes and said, “There is an army coming - of Orcs and Wargs. It doesn’t...it never _ends.”_

His voice broke on the last word and he fled from them all, the Arkenstone clutched tightly in his hand. The others clamored around Balin, asking what he meant, what was Thorin talking about, _what_ army, but Dís ignored them all and wasted no time in chasing after her brother.

It wasn’t hard to follow him. His legs were slightly longer than hers, but his robes and chains of office made noise that made him easy to track, even as he ran down corridors and up stairs that she had no memory off.

The throne room was his object. Dís ran down the aisle that led to her grandfather’s - no, _Thorin’s_ seat. It was intact and as she strode down the smooth stone, she saw Thorin restore the Arkenstone to its proper place. His face was washed in blue-white starlight. It smoothed his complexion so that he looked far younger than his years.

He did not sit upon the throne. He backed away from the dais, eyes raised up as if he was a supplicant come to plead on his own behalf before the monarch.

“An army?” she asked, breathlessly.

Thorin turned to her and did not wipe at the tears streaming down his face. He nodded. “Gandalf...he said there are thousands of them. More than we can hope to match with the combined might of the Iron Hills _and_ the Men and Elves who have made camp. They are coming swiftly. There is no time to flee. Nowhere to go. Even if we delve deep in the rock, they would come and overtake us.”

“How does he know?” she asked despairingly. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be. They’d come so _far._

“He was their prisoner,” Thorin said flatly, removing his coat, letting it fall in a heap on the floor. With it went his chains and rings, clattering to the stone and rolling away. “He saw their numbers. He said...he said he wasn’t sure there was a point in telling us. Seeing as how we were ready to do the Orcs’ evil works for them.”

“He’s wicked,” she declared, nails biting into her palms. “He’s cruel. He said it was hopeless?”

“No,” Thorin admitted darkly. “I worked that out for myself.”

Dís closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Thorin was sitting on the floor of the throne room, his head in his hands. A thousand meaningless encouragements floated through her mind. _We’re alive, aren’t we? We’re forewarned. If the Elves and the Men are on our side…_

But she couldn’t do it.

She sat beside Thorin, shoulder to shoulder and said only, “I’m sorry.”

“I feel like I’m pushing a boulder up a hill that never ends,” Thorin said into his palms. “Just when I think we’ve reached a plateau - the Blue Mountains, Erebor, the Arkenstone...it never _ends.”_

Dís swallowed, hard. She took a deep breath to try and calm her racing thoughts and quell the panic that threatened to devour her. It was all for naught. They’d humbled themselves enough to petition Bard again, but as ever success was laced with the bitter agony of knowing that they had done all they could and it was still not enough. More warfare. More death. More agony. Until the end of all days came upon them.

It was the great irony of the dwarven race; for they would only truly be at peace when the world itself was ended.

“Did you see Bilbo?” she asked, for want of anything else to say.

“I did,” Thorin said, lowering his hands so that they lay limply in his lap. “He came running...told Bard to return the stone. Probably he remembered what I’d done to him and didn’t want Bard to suffer something worse.”

“You stayed your hand,” Dís said, reaching out and twining her fingers with Thorin’s.

He shook his head and covered her hand with his free one.

 _“You_ stayed my hand,” he said. “This once. I feel I’ve endured all I can. I’m tired, Dís. I don’t think I can take any more. And there is always something more, some new enemy. Some _old_ enemy...this is all my fault.”

“Don’t,” Dís started. “Don’t say that, this isn’t - ”

“Who do you think stands at the vanguard?” Thorin asked, pulling away from her and hunching his shoulders. “Who, but Azog? If I had - ”

“Shut up.”

They both looked up as one. Dwalin was standing over them, his arms folded and his eyes flinty.

“You don’t mould the earth,” he said flatly, looking down his nose at Thorin who stared up at him, frowning. “I know you think you do - there’s that pride you’re forever being chided over - but you don’t.”

With a growl of frustration Thorin stood up and stalked away from him.

“Both of you - _once_ , will you _once_ let me feel how much I have failed? How much I have been to blame! My life, all of it, has been a lie. _Oakenshield,”_ he spat the epithet like it was a curse. “What have I done? Bought us a few years of miserable poverty. Made us the great laughingstock of the Kingdoms - the mad Longbeards and their pride, and their foolhardiness! If we die here, they’ll say, ‘Good riddance!’ and for me it would be - ”  
Dwalin could count on one hand the number of times he’d raised his fist to his best friend, brother, and king over the years. To the tally he added one more notch as his closed fist connected to the side of Thorin’s head and down he tumbled. Dwalin grasped him by the shirtfront and hauled him to his feet.

“Stop it!” he roared. “I know, Thorin, I know - we _all_ know! You wish it’d been you who’d died. I’ve seen it in your face every day since Moria! You live like one half-dead already - you have no idea. No _idea_ what it’s like for us to watch you suffer as you do. No idea what it’s like to see someone you love more than the waking world live as if each day brings him one step closer to the executioner’s block.”

Dwalin released Thorin and he stumbled back. Dís looked between the two of them, her heart in her throat, not such which one she ought to hold back. But Thorin did not lunge at Dwalin, did not attempt to give blow for blow. He was breathing very hard, but he did not flee, he did not fight.

Dwalin scrubbed a hand over his face, “You think I don’t know why you came here? You would have gone it alone, if we let you.”

“Dwalin,” Dís said tightly. “Don’t.”

“He needs to hear it - ”

“I don’t!” she burst out shrilly. “I don’t need to hear it.”

She covered her mouth with her hands and bit down on her tongue to keep from sobbing. Cry, cry, cry. It was all she’d done for a century and a half, it seemed. She wept for her home, she wept for her family, wept for her husband, her kinsmen, her sons. And Thorin. Always for Thorin. Where he couldn’t see. She’d mourned him every day for a hundred years.

When he’d come back to the healers’ tents after the first wave of battle, soaked in sweat and blood and she held him and beat him and wept into his chest, she’d known it then. When the call came that they were going to enter the gates of Moria, she saw the fear in his eyes, but beyond that, the relief. The thought that came into his mind, probably not for the first time, _ah, here is where it all ends, at last._

But none entered the Mountain that day. Death passed Thorin by, indifferent to him as it had not been to so many of their people in the days before and since. This quest...beneath all the words of duty and longing for home, she knew that part of Thorin was merely chasing the death that had been denied him all those years ago.  
Dwalin and Thorin were staring at her now and she rolled her eyes up at the ceiling where the shadows ran deepest. The time for weeping was past, it would do her no good, if it ever had before.

Dís crossed to Thorin and took him by the hands.

“I wanted something more for you,” Thorin said thickly, unable to meet her eyes. “For the boys...I _never_ wanted them to suffer what we had suffered. And now - ”

She shut him up in a gentler way than Dwalin had; a kiss upon the cheek that had taken the blow.

“I know,” she said. “I know. But if we must fight again...please, promise me you will _fight_ , won’t you? It’s all well and good to die for the sake of the kingdom, but won’t you try and _live_ as well?”

Thorin took a deep, shuddering breath and shook his head.

“If I do,” he said when he collected himself. “Know that it is for your sakes'. Not my own. For I have never felt myself so unworthy of my life as I do now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we've managed to get the Arkenstone returned, but the Orcs are coming, and Thorin is in a worse headspace than ever. At least he's not threatening to throw people off the mountain, right? One step forward, two steps back...


	54. Chapter 54

“You remember what they used to call my father, lass?”

They had food enough from the Lake-men now to make a decent supper, but none of them was very hungry. Dwalin and Dís sat slightly apart from the others, his arm was draped over her shoulder and her head rested on his shoulder. Their eyes were fixed on Fíli and Kíli, who positioned themselves on either side of Thorin.

‘Taking the watch,’ they’d called it, winking and grinning. No one had the heart to tell them off for their good humor.

“Fundin the Fearless?” Dís’s voice rose to questioning only at the end. She thought that was right, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Aye, that’s right,” Dwalin’s voice was low and quiet in her ear. She was probably the only one who could hear him. She was definitely the only one meant to hear him. “It was a well-deserved name. Never shirked from battle, brave as anything. And do you know what he said to me once?”

Dís took her eyes off Thorin and the lads to look up at Dwalin. “What?”

“He said Thorin made him nervous.”

Dís looked back at Thorin. He was sitting with his back to the wall, his legs bent and his arms limply balanced on his knees. Diminished, if he ever could be diminished. Defeated.

“Why?”

Dwalin’s eyes had a distant, far-away look in them. She knew he wasn’t seeing the huge arcing shadows that their small fire and few lanterns could not pierce, but brightly-lit halls, hustling and bustling with the lives of thousands of dwarves. Looking at Erebor now, desolate, so quiet, it was hard to imagine the glory days, long past.

“It was years ago - long before we went campaigning. We were young. Thorin had done well on the training grounds, every lad and lass that went against him was battered away. His father told him he was proud - _that_ I remember, your Da never had two kind things to string together about anyone.”

Dís well remembered that, how Thorin fought so hard to earn a scrap of praise from their father’s lips. Frerin hadn’t cared much either way - at least, she never thought so. That was Frerin’s great gift, not caring what others thought of him. It was a quality that neither his brother nor his sister shared.

“It was usually my father who talked him up - but not then. We were walking home together after and he seemed…”

Here Dwalin trailed off, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You likely don’t remember much, but my Da wasn’t always...the way he was. After.”

Dís remembered him well. Remembered the way her mother used to sigh, sometimes, when she saw him standing or sitting alone in silence. _“Poor Fundin,”_ she’d say and Dís hardly knew why for he didn’t seem any worse off than the rest of them. He was never sick, rarely even injured. She didn’t see why he should deserve her mother’s pity more than anyone else.

When she was a girl, she was just the tiniest bit frightened of him, though looking back she hardly knew why. Big and strong he was, a giant in her eyes, but he never raged about the camp as some did. He spoke sharply, sometimes, to his sons and the other lads if he thought they were being reckless, but he never had a harsh word for her. It was only that he seemed so sad, so troubled. That sort of thing put a child off. Too often Dís mistook sorrow for anger, in those days.

“You don’t have to explain,” Dís said softly.

“No, I do,” he said with a bite of frustration. “So you understand. He was happy, once. Kindly. Gentle-natured.”

“He was kind,” Dís said, looking up at Dwalin and kissing his cheek. “Like his sons.”

A smile quirked Dwalin’s lips, but it was quick to vanish. “Always encouraging, even to the slowest-witted and clumsiest amongst us, ‘Walk it off, you’ll do better next time, you’re improving...’ Especially toward Thorin. I suppose he thought he needed it.

“Anyway, he was quiet as we made our way back, I was yammering on about something, bragging like an idiot, I think. About how Thorin and I could take on all the legions of Gundabad with an arm around our backs. That’s when he said it. That Thorin made him nervous.”

Dís’s gaze kept sliding compulsively to Thorin, his words echoing in her mind, _Never have I felt so unworthy of my life as I do now._

“He said he fought too hard,” Dwalin said, looking at Thorin as well. “Like he didn’t have anything to lose. He said that was dangerous.”

Swallowing hard, Dís bit the inside of her cheek to keep the tears from welling up in her eyes. They’d gone down this road so many times before with Thorin. Long hours of silence from him, staring silences when he’d not eat or talk or even listen. Days when he’d lay in bed, not working. Those were the worst days of all because Dís remembered her mother, lying in bed. Giving up.

But Thorin rallied himself. He always had done. Yet even as she saw him now, she had a feeling that without Fíli and Kíli sitting stubbornly on either side of him, he might have fallen to the floor in despair.

 _Stop!_ she wanted to shake him. _You’re home now! We’re home now! Who knows how much longer we have here and you’re going to spend it like this?_

She didn’t move. She knew he hadn’t a choice in the matter. She’d hoped that if Erebor was reclaimed, he would somehow get better. That this sickness that overtook his mind would be beaten back when he assumed his rightful place. She should have known better. Should have remembered that even the stone walls of Erebor could not keep horrors away.

“You think he’s going to die,” Dís said, her voice a thin whisper. “You think he’ll let himself be killed.”

“I don’t,” Dwalin said sharply, tilting her chin up with his hand. “No, I don’t, I don’t...think it’s that simple. I just think...if he’s killed, he won’t mind. And that’s a terrible attitude to take to battle with you.”

She didn’t understand, not really. When she signed the contract and decided to go along on this quest, she couldn’t bear the thought of her son and kinsmen going into the wilds without her. To be left behind she could not bear, to let them go without her was a thought not worth entertaining for an instant. But she wanted to fight _with_ them that she might help. That she might save them. That they might all live to see something good at the end of this long road.

Thorin was different. He wanted good things for his people, Dís thought, but not for himself. Unworthy, he always thought he was and this theft of the Arkenstone had rattled him to the core. It seemed a confirmation of his worst fears; if he was meant to rule, why was his not the hand that grasped the stone from the first? Why had it found its way into Bilbo’s pocket? Why had the Maker permitted it to leave their halls?

He had not been back to the throne room since he placed the stone in its setting. Dís wondered if he would ever let himself sit upon the throne at all. If he would ever have the chance.

“Aren’t we enough?” she asked. “Why haven’t we ever been enough?”

“Oh, lass,” Dwalin sighed. He closed his eyes and pulled her close. “I’ll tell you true - if it weren’t for you, I don’t think he’d have lasted a year after the wars were over.”

Lasting. Was that what Thorin was doing, then? Surviving, like a piece of ancient pottery, too fragile to be used, but still _there_ , going on despite itself. She didn’t want that for him. She wanted him to live - she wanted him to want to live.

Shaking off Dwalin’s arm, Dís rose. She walked to Thorin and knelt down behind him. Then she wrapped her arms over his shoulders and held him. At first, he did not stir. It was like embracing stone. Then one of his hands rose and rested warmly atop her own.

* * *

 

“Tell me something good,” Dís said, a short while later when all the rest of the Company was abed and she and Thorin took the watch. They did not look to the encampment of Men and Elves now, but kept their eyes to the horizon, hoping to see the plumes of Dáin’s warrior’s helms, dreading to see the glint of Orcish pikes.

Fíli insisted upon staying with them and Kíli as well. Their will was stronger than their stamina; both were dozing lightly, shoulder to shoulder, their heads touching.

“Good?” Thorin asked as if the word was foreign to him. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I say,” she replied, keeping her voice even only through great effort. “Tell me something good. Anything. A memory, if you like, but _something._ For me.”

And that did it. Had Dís insisted that Thorin speak of happier times to improve his own disposition, he’d have scoffed, gone away. Perhaps locked himself in the treasurehouse, to glut his eyes on sights and beauties that he felt he did not deserve to look upon, but once she asked him to do something for her sake, it was done.

“Well…” he began, taking a breath as his eyes unfocused, his gaze far-away from them all. “Let me see.”

Dís pressed closer to his side and cursed those who would call her brother greedy.

“There was a Mahalmerag celebration...you were not yet born, I don’t think. I was very young. Frerin was younger, but it was the first year Dwalin and I were given strong spirits - ”

“Axes forfend,” Dís snorted, thinking of giving Kíli and Fíli a glass of punch when they weren’t any older than thirty.

“A thimbleful a-piece,” Thorin said softly, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Aye, it was given to honor the Mother of Clan Blacklock. Strong liquor; it burned my throat and I tried not to cough.”

“But of course, you did.”

“Of course I did,” Thorin nodded. “Of course. And then asked for more. Our father flatly refused.”

 _I thought I asked for a happy memory,_ Dís nearly said, but didn’t want to interrupt Thorin once he’d gotten started.

“He laughed,” he said and started Dís tremendously with the pronouncement. Her father. Laughing. Never. “Rolled his eyes, told us there was sweetness enough in the cakes to satisfy us. And there were, of course, such a spread as you never saw...that you’d remember, anyway. The confectioners had made jewels out of almond paste and flowers out of sugar. Too pretty to eat...not that that stopped us.”

“What else happened?” Dís asked him, closing her eyes, trying to imagine the dining halls with their blazing torches, tables laden with treats, the smells of roasting meat. If it hadn’t been for the meal of fish, her stomach would have rumbled.

“Nothing of consequence, nothing out of the ordinary,” Thorin shrugged.

“Tell me anyway.”

And so he did. Told her about the singing and toasting that went on long past midnight. Talked about how the Lord of Dale, his family and his Sovereigns came to the Mountain to pay the tidings of the season to their grandfather. The Gate was open and the Men came in - not so far, but far enough to feel the warmth of their halls, to drink their spirits, eat their food. Then, when the sky was still ink-black, they all of them trudged out into the snow to watch the fireworks crackle and explode above the Mountain.

“It was beautiful,” Thorin concluded. “I was half-certain I’d dreamed the night in the morning, I fell asleep just as soon as I was put to bed.”

If Dís stretched her mind back very far, she could remember nights like that. Nights of plenty and cheer. But after so many years, the faces were blurred and the memory was fading; by now she could not say whether or not she was remembering her past as it happened or as it had been told to her.

“Tell me another,” she said, the request halfway between an order and a request.

“Shall I tell you about the night you were born?” he asked, just a hint of teasing in his voice. Dís bit back a smile; _that_ had been her favorite story when she was tiny - obviously, with the selfishness common to all children, she thought it had been the most important night in her family’s lives.

“No, I know that one,” she said. “Tell me more about yourself.”

“What _I_ was doing the night you were born?” Thorin asked, raising an eyebrow and pressing on before she could say anything more. “Very well. I was with Dwalin, of course. Frerin and I were confined to the sitting room, Balin and Dwalin’s father was keeping an eye on us, but it was late and he’d fallen asleep and Frerin with him. I wish I could say the two of us were too excited about your coming into the world to sleep, but I believe we were trying to prove that we were quite grown-up and did not need to be put to bed at a set time.”

“Of course you were quite grown-up,” Dís smiled. “No doubt when Frerin was born you tried to prove that you didn’t need naps either.”

“Something like that,” Thorin nodded. “We had broken into the biscuit tin - for stamina, you know - when Dwalin’s mother rushed in, _’It’s a girl, it’s a girl, by the Maker, a girl at last!’_ She was so happy.”

Dwalin cleared his throat above their heads, startling them both. He was smiling. “Uncanniest thing; I thought I heard my brother out here, but he’s sleeping like stone.”

“My brother was doing an impression of your mother,” Dís winked.

Dwalin snorted, “And doing a bad job of it, from the sound. What’s she done to deserve it?”

“Announcing my birth to you both.”

“Ah,” Dwalin sat down and Fíli and Kíli stirred, then sat bolt-upright. “That old story.”  
“Breakfast?” Kíli asked as Fíli, seeing that it was still dark, rolled over on the stone and drew his hand over his face.

“Not yet,” Dís said. “Go back to sleep, I was just talking to your uncle.”

“M’not asleep,” Fíli insisted. “Been up for ages…”

“You ought to be telling the story of _my_ birth,” Kíli said, then began it for them. “It was a dark and stormy night…”

“Mine’s better,” Fíli yawned. “It was a hot and sweltering day, pennies melted in your pocket…”

Both lads looked at Thorin expectantly, waiting for him to pick up the end of the tale.

“Know them by rote, do you?” he asked, folding his arms.

“You tell them by rote,” Kíli grinned. “Right to the ending…‘but the winter days to come were warmer for having you in the house.’”

“‘It was the hottest summer on record,’” Fíli added, leaning against his elbows, “‘because you bright the sun with you.’ By the Maker, Uncle, you’re a wax-hearted fellow, aren’t you?”

“Your father always said that,” Thorin informed him. “He used to say the same of your mother.”

“Miss Sunshine,” Dwalin added, giving Dís a sly smile.

She shrugged smugly, “I can’t help it; I’m radiant.”

They all had a quiet chuckle at that. Kíli cocked his head at Thorin and said, “Go on, then, what happened the night you were born?”

“Oh, I can tell you,” Balin cut in. He did not sit, but stood above them, arms folded. He didn’t seem to have slept; his eyes were tired. “Your uncle’s been at everyone’s beck and call since the moment of his coming into the world. And that was just it; he came when he was summoned.”

“How do you mean?” Fíli asked.

“Well, it was very near your grandmother’s time and Freya had yet to choose a common name for her son - ”

“No!” Dís exclaimed, astonished. “Not Ama! She was cross if I mislaid my cloak, and she’d not chosen a common name for her first son before he was born?”

“There was a small debate,” Balin continued. “Among the best and brightest of the Mountain’s courtiers. Your mother liked ‘Thorin,’ she said it aloud - and then the birthing pains were upon her and not four days later, Erebor had her prince.”

Dís snorted in disbelief and her sons looked at Thorin in something like awe. He’d not reflected on the story of his birth in years, but Thorin well remembered the tale; his mother had her own explanation. “Well. I was trying to be obliging. I wouldn’t have wanted everyone kept waiting.”

“You’re ever dutiful,” Dís said. Her eyes were overbright in the predawn light. For this was her Thorin, was it not? Quiet, but so _good_. Gently mocking of himself, aye, always, but at least he could smile now. For the moment and she wanted this moment to last for always.

She opened her mouth to speak again, but a cry from the ravens overhead made them look up. The largest of the scouts circled once, then dropped something into Thorin’s waiting hand; he threw it over the wall almost at once, convulsively wiping his hand against his trousers, but they had all seen what it was.

A black pupil, ringed with a sickly yellow hue. The Orcs were coming fast upon them and there was no sign of Dáin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone's who's interested, Thorin's birth story is looked at more closely in Chapter 3 of _To the Marriage of True Minds (or To the Edge of Doom)_ and the Mahalmerag party is the feature of Chapter 15 of _Hobbit Advent Prompt Fills._ Alas, there will be Epic Action Sequences in the future. I'd rather write Happy Erebor stories, but that's not where we're going with this...yet... ;-)


	55. Chapter 55

The Dwarves remained ensconced in their Mountain. The Men feared treachery. The Elves assumed they were barricading themselves in against the threat, forfiting all ties of friendship.

That was not it. Not by far. They were engaged in solemn remembrances, too secret, too intimate to breathe a word of to outsiders. Let the Men think what they would. Let the Elves squint their eyes and make all the false pronouncements they wished. The Dwarves knew their own and they would pay them proper tribute; they had to. They might not get another chance. 

Once more the sacrificial fires burned. Once more the old songs were sung in the dark and dusty Temple. They who knew the prayers spoke them; the others mumbled along as best they could. 

Then they armed themselves for war.

It was no easy task, the sharpening and cleaning of arms and armor left unused for over a century. Blades were oiled and rust rubbed away from the corners of breastplates. 

“S’hands,” Dwalin exclaimed into the grim silence that accompanied their labor. “Would you look at that?”

He was holding up a breastplate, unbelted. The leather was practically worn through, it would have to be replaced before it could be of use to anyone; and it would certainly not serve him, it was far too narrow and too short. 

Yet stamped along the collar were a set of initials, just barely visible after years of use. DF.

“That can’t have been yours,” Dís said, more to make conversation than out of any real lack of belief. Dwalin would know his own armor, after all. Even now. 

“It was...might do for Fíli,” he said, eyeing the breadth of the lad’s shoulders compared with the armor he held in his hands. 

“I’ll take it!” Fíli said without hesitation, jumping up to snatch at it. “Could be you sweated some skill into the padding, eh, Mister Dwalin? When’d you last wear it?”

“Court,” Dwalin replied. “When I was...sixty, sixty-five, or thereabouts.”

Kíli had been eyeing Fíli’s new armor with undisguised envy, until it was revealed that it had last outfitted a soft-bearded youngling. Then he broke out in a grin and stood up, elbowing his brother in the side as he looked down on him, standing up on his toes a bit to make it more obvious that he was half a head taller than his elder bother. “Sounds about right.”

“Broadbeam blood,” Dís shrugged. “Closer to the earth, as is proper.”

She was taller than both her lads and never, in recent memory, had they seemed younger or smaller to her than they did now. It was off to war, any day, and though they were dwarves, born and bred to craft and fight, she could not help worrying for them. 

Would she be a true mother if she did not? Would she be a true dwarf if she bade them stay behind?

No. No, she would not. And so she blinked back against an unwanted rush of tears and told Fíli to replace the buckles quick and carefully as he could.

For herself, she found a tolerably well-preserved set of full armor, though the helm was missing and the ornamentation on the greaves badly dented.

“D’you know - ” Thorin and Dwalin both spoke at once and every head in the room turned toward them. Dwalin, uncharacteristically, had been one of the chattiest amongst them as they outfitted themselves for battle. But then, this was his millieu; Thorin had been as quiet and somber as the Mountain itself since their little gift of forewarning from the ravens came. They had very little time.

The two were quiet now, looking at each other. Some unspoken words passed between them, for Thorin rose to his feet and said, “The damp’s gotten into some of this lot. And the dust. There are other places.”

“Aye, there are,” Balin said carefully, looking between Thorin and his brother. He might not have their gift for silent communication, but he had an uncanny ability to see into both their minds on occasion. “You go. I’ll stay behind here.”

There were two guards - if you could call them that - posted. One at the door to the armory, the other upon the battlements, scanning the horizon for any sign of approaching troops or a word from the Men and Elves in the valley. Nori and Ori were there now, with Dori gone along because he couldn’t bear to let them alone for too long. Not that he’d said as much, he just insisted on making it a three-body watch rather than two. Nori said it was because his voice was the most piercing amongst them and the most likely to be heard through stone. But he did not object to his coming. 

“I’ll - ” Bofur started to scramble to his feet, but Bifur grabbed his arm and tugged him down to sitting.

“We’ll work on this still,” Bombur said, gesturing to the detritus of half-complete suits of armor. “Bit o’scrubbing, could be made useful.”

Bifur said nothing. He only waved them on with a gesture, _Go._

It seemed a given that the lads would rise to follow Dwalin and Thorin. Dís likewise joined them; Dori was not the only one who wanted to keep an eye on his best-loved kin.

There were torches - few, but they glowed bright - in the corridors now. Thorin took one off the wall as the descended deep into the Mountain, retreading a path he knew instinctively.

The stone seemed to pulse subtly, in time with his heartbeat. _Home. Home. Home._ It felt right to go deeper, to burrow down into the depths of the earth, let the rock shelter them. But they could not; they had a vow had been made and they must keep it. 

Thorin glanced behind at his nephews who eagerly dogged his footsteps, walking so fast they threatened to overtake him. They always slowed their steps, boots skidding on dusty streets; they did not know the way.

Briefly, Thorin closed his eyes. This was their home as much as it was his. He had known that always, tried to impress that upon their minds from their earliest hours. Their lodgings in the West had been just that, a place to keep their things and lay their heads of a night. True, the little flat they’d sold had become dear to him, the place where he lived with his sister and raised his nephews. But it was a place, not their home. _This_ was their home; they knew the sound of stone calling to them.

Further back still, Dís walked side-by-side with Dwalin, he speaking quietly to her. _“Haberdasher...sweets shop...bookstore, aye, I could walk that one blindfolded…”_

Dís nodded along as he spoke, squinting at the dark and empty shops. Some looked as if they’d merely been shut up for a bit, during the slow hours. That at any moment, their keepers would return to unshutter the windows, throw open the doors and welcome the next bout of dwarflings with pennies to spend on trinkets. 

But just as many shops and stalls were overturned, windows broken, walls collapsed or gored where gilded signs had been torn away. The city was a shambles; that could not be denied. But it was _their_ city. 

This had all been _his_ once. He’d played on these streets as a child, walked them as a youngling, hurrying from this place and that. Fastening on court robes, throwing them off in favor of worn leather jerkins worn upon the Guard’s training grounds.

Tall coal braziers lined the corridors; seasons went unmarked for some beneath the Mountain, but as it had been autumn, greater effort was made to ward off the chill that could creep in from out of doors. They were cold now. Winter was hastening upon them once again. 

Thorin quickened his pace; he could not dwell on ruined marketplaces. They had a task to perform. He could not afford to lose himself in dwelling on the past. But even as his boots sounded loudly against the stone, he found himself remembering, though he tried to will away all thoughts.

The statue gallery off the throne room, hung with tapestries, lined with heroes of history, dwarves and dwarrowdams, distinguished in craft or battle. He’d played hide and seek there, as had his brother and sister after him. With a pang, he recalled that was just what he’d last seen them doing, when they were all together, before…

“Here,” Dwalin’s warm, reassuring hand fell on his shoulder, guiding him around a corner. “You’ve nearly missed it.”

The royal apartments were done up with white marble facades, inlaid with gold. Gone, all gone. Yet the latticed windows still twinkled and winked in the light of his torch. 

There was what had been his grandparents’ suite. What a place of fun that had been, the chairs and couches often pushed to the walls, their cushions laid on the floor, blankets turned into a hundred forts from which had been launched a thousand friendly battles. Umad, with her thick grey hair and huge, rough hands, played dragon often enough, breaking through their defenses of cotton and down, tickling them mercilessly until they laughed too hard to breath. Udad let them ride on his shoulders, round and round the room, the noblest mount for the tiniest warriors. 

Further down the road was the home in which Balin and Dwalin lived with their parents. The outer rooms were tastefully furnished and the couch much less likely to suffer abuse. The tables were usually spread with all manner of papers, books, and pots of ink. There, they were guaranteed a pot of cocoa and a good story or two, if their mother was not too busy. Mister Fundin liked to sit and listen to his wife as much as the children did and a prize place to sit was in his lap, leaning against his chest, warm and cozy as could be.

The center dwelling was Thorin’s own home of childhood. How well he remembered his mother’s workshop, a small fire blazing so she could smelt silver and shape it into delicate chains or settings for fine jewels. The sitting room he remembered as his father’s domain, how he would sit nights with a book in his hand, sometimes reading, sometimes only holding it. How he’d take Thorin on his knee and read to him, if his humor permitted it. 

It was to this room that Thorin went now, holding the torch aloft to bring light to its deepest corners.

“Hearth looks alright,” Dwalin observed. “I’ll see if I can’t do something with it.”

He took the torch from Thorin, left him standing in the center of the room. Kíli squinted round and whistled through his teeth. “Not bad. How many flats?”

“This _is_ the flat, cabbagehead,” Fíli cuffed him on the back of the head, then shot an anxious look at Thorin. “Eh?”

“Aye,” he said, then repeated itself, for he hadn’t spoken at all, merely formed the word with his mouth, drawing little air in his lungs. “It was.”

Dís went up to Fíli, took his hand and gave him a tug. “Come along - d’you want to see a picture of your uncle when he was a wee thing?”

“How wee are we talking?” Kíli asked. “Fíli-sized?”

“Varla-sized,” she replied, speaking of Bombur’s middle daughter. “Or smaller. Come along, judge for yourself.”

They followed her up the staircase which led to the bedrooms. Thorin meant to call after them. That wasn’t what they’d come for, that wasn’t why they were here, there wasn’t _time._ Only there had to be, didn’t there? If not now, they might not have another chance. 

“Tolerable,” Dwalin said, rising from where he’d gotten a small fire going in the hearth. “Why we ever gave the job of starting fires to Gloin, I’ll never know, he blew half of them out with his whinging...now, then.”

He rose and crossed the room to Thorin, looking at him with a bit of slyness, a bit of cheek. He’d been the most innocent-faced lad at once time, round-faced with dimples, no one could resist a smile off him (save his own parents) and that smile saved him dozens of punishments over the years. Thorin wasn’t so easily fooled; more often than not, that look meant trouble.

“You haven’t got your fathers spare keys handy.”

“I haven’t,” Thorin said, nearly smiling despite himself. “Nor you your mother’s.”

“Nay.”

“Or your father’s.”

“Or your mother’s.”

“Well, then,” Thorin said, approaching the weapons cabinet which had seemed such a monolith to him when he was young. It was tall, nearly took up the space of one wall. “There’s only one thing for it.”

Dwarven locksmiths were some of the cleverest, most skilled of their kind. Those masters of their craft made doors so cunning they could not be seen unless spells were broken or the moonlight shone just so. But this was, all things considered, a very ordinary sort of lock. And ordinary sorts of locks, however well made, could only withstand the clobbering of dwarven boots for so long. 

By the time the door swung open, Thorin was smiling and Dwalin was laughing. 

“Imagine if we’d thought of _that_ when we were young,” Dwalin shook his head, swinging the door open, revealing rows and rows of sharp axes, heavy swords, and thick warhammers. “Neither of us wouldn’t been able to sit for a week.”

“Or kneel,” Thorin added, grimly. “Your backside might have gotten a beating, I’d have been made to do some sort of added penance, scrubbing the floors of the arena, scouring up bloodspills...there’s a lovely piece of work.”

He removed a longsword from one of the racks, a fine piece so heavy that he’d need the use of both hands to wield it properly.

“Aye, so it is,” Dwalin plucked it out of his hand and gave the sword a few experimental swings, one-handed. “Thanks.”

Thorin snorted, “Come, I’m down a sword - ”

“And I’m lost two axes,” he shrugged. Then, after a moment, looked thoughtful. “As we’ve established a truce between us and the Elves, you ought to ask them for that sword back. Suited you.”

“I don’t know if I ought to be offended or not,” Thorin replied, then sighed slightly. It had been fine, Orcrist. It was said, the more often steel was bathed in blood, the cannier it became at seeking it out. He could use a bit of that, in days to come. “It was a fine blade, but I wouldn’t beg a present off of Thranduil, not for all the gold…”

Not for all the gold in Erebor. He trailed off, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry. Dwalin smiled and lay a hand on his shoulder. “Well. You’ve hardly need of that. ‘Less you were feeling greedy.”

Thorin lay his head in his hand and the pressure on his shoulder tightened as Dwalin squeezed muscles that were tense and wary. 

“You’ve a way with words,” Thorin mumbled into his hand. He thought of the treasure, spilling out among the stones. Restitution, the Men craved. Blood-gold. And why should he give it to them? But how could he not?

“Thorin - ”

“UNCLE!” 

Fíli was coming down the stairs, jumping the last three to the ground. In his left hand he was brandishing something, Kíli took up the rear, trying his best not to smile. 

“What is this?” his elder nephew demanded, shaking a scrap of black cloth under his nose. “Go on - you never told me that Goose was _inspired.”_

Goose - ah, what a child Fíli could be sometimes. That little stuffed wolf, his playmate of childhood. And he saw that what he’d taken as a rag was, in fact, a well-worn stuffed wolf, same size, same shape, but his cloth was faded, his fur rubbed off, his nose tarnished. 

“I wanted you to think I was very clever and original,” Thorin said simply. He had to take the poor pup away from Fíli before he wiggled his head clean off. “Be careful with that, it’s valuable.”

“What’d you call it, Uncle?” Kíli asked. “Pig? Doorknocker? It’s got to be even worse than Goose - ”

“Goose is a fine, dignified name,” Fíli said, sniffing dismissively. “If you had brains as the rest of us have and not a head made of leaves, you’d know this.”

If his father was here, he’d have words for the lads. Thráin could not abide levity in the face of tragedy. But he was gone and they would never know their grandfather. Thorin felt his father had been denied a great goodness. And that the lads had, perhaps, been spared.

Guilt stabbed at his heart, a sharp twinge against the constant ache of regret and self-recrimination that daily plagued him. It would never pass, but it would dull until the pain was as familiar to him as the sound of his own breath. He’d carried it for so long, he’d no idea what he would feel if he was relieved of the burden. He did not know how he could be relieved.

“It was called ‘Woof,’” Thorin replied before Kíli could respond to Fíli’s goading. He was _not_ his father. He wouldn’t shame them into silence, if he could help it. “Because that’s the sound the dogs made and because ‘Wolf’ was tricky on the tongue when I was ten.”

“Where’d you find that, anyway?” Dwalin asked.

“Mam found it, it was sitting on her bed,” Kíli explained. “Along with more dolls and toys than are in the village toyshop. Mister Bifur would’ve done great business here, eh? If all dwarflings were as spoiled as you!”

“Spoiled?” Dís asked. She had not come down, but stood on the landing, one hand resting upon the rail. “The nerve. I was third along, let’s not forget that Woof was mine, having been handed down”

“Aye, and let’s remember that he was in _very_ good company,” Thorin said, distractedly. He sat the toy down upon his father’s sagging armchair, thinking, _That looks more like home._

Thorin shivered slightly, folding his arms over his chest. This place...it was unsettling. On the one hand, he half expected the door of his mother’s workshop to swing open, to be scolded over leaving his things lying about. On the other, it was so dark, so quiet, so desolate that it seemed a foreign land and but for the thrum of the rock around him, he would have hardly known the place.  
Fíli was taking in the room again with wide eyes. A great portrait caught his interest and he tilted his head up at it consideringly. “That’s them?” he asked quietly. “Umad and Udad and Uncle Frerin?”

This was a more recent likeness than the one in the nursery. Dís was a child in it, young and soft-limbed, sitting on their father’s lap. She’d been painted with a smile, Thorin was sure it had been drawn based on the real thing. Frerin was standing beside his sitting mother, smiling slightly, a toned-down version of his usual wide grin. More appropriate for a formal portrait. Thráin and Freya were sitting side by side, their hands painted close, resting lightly upon the arms of their chairs. Close, but not touching. That was, of course, how Thorin remembered them best.

His father was grave and serious, his scars rendered in painstaking detail, making his face look graver still. There was no hint of a smile beneath his beard, nor was the flesh around his good eye crinkled in mirth. Freya was beautiful, as ever, but grave herself. Her eyes were sad, but the artist had been so kind as to smooth out any pinched lines from between her eyebrows. 

And looming over them all was himself. Sitting beside his father, a gawky, awkward thing whose shoulders hadn’t filled out, whose chest was narrow and his arms long and thin. The artist had been honest with him, not kind. His eyes were fixed and serious, his mouth a thin line. He looked frightened. 

This did not escape Fíli’s notice. “By the Maker, you all look so _grim.”_

“That’s portraits for you,” Dwalin said when Thorin did not reply. “Everyone looks miserable - you’d look grim too if you were sitting for hours while someone took your likeness.”

“Ah,” Kíli lit up. “That means there’s a painting of _you_ around somewhere, Mister Dwalin? Show me - then I can tell everyone back in the Ered Luin that you didn’t come out of a rock that cracked open in a lightning storm.”

“You’ll tell them no such thing,” Dís said firmly. “I’ve heard that the last portrait of Dwalin was _so_ frightful that it was put away so as not to drive people screaming from the sitting room in terror.”

He cuffed the back of her head. “I’m not _so_ ugly as that.”

“Nay,” she grinned. “Far worse. Let’s see if we can’t find it - ”

“There isn’t time - ” Thorin began, but Dwalin wrapped an arm around his shoulders and steered him toward the door.

“There are more weapons next door,” he pointed out. But his fingers were digging into Thorin’s arm and he was walking so quickly away that Thorin almost stumbled. Dwalin was a protector, first and foremost. He was so stalwart that he tried to keep Thorin safe from everything, even his own thoughts.

_What brave souls._

His sister, nattering on about portraits. His nephews, teasing each other over the names of stuffed toys. His cousin, leading him away from ghosts, prepared to confront his own memories to spare Thorin the pain of his. What brave souls. And what horrors awaited them all on the morrow.

The doors to Dwalin’s family’s suite required a few hard knocks from dwarven shoulders to open. A cloud of dust blew in their faces, rag paper sheets fluttered to the floor at their feet. It was much darker here, going from the fire lit in Thorin’s family’s apartment to the torchlight they carried with them. But their eyes adjusted and they peered around, eagerly and apprehensively by turns.

The rooms were sized much the same as Thorin’s old home, but even more comfortably lived-in. How he’d loved escaping here as a child, sitting on the rug before the fire, listening to Missus Halldóra’s stories of legend, Mister Fundin’s stories of battle. Annoying Balin and finding in Dwalin a brother in spirit, if not in kin. It felt more like coming home, being in this place, where he’d been happiest.

“There we are,” Dwalin said, clearing his throat roughly. Thorin glanced up at him, wondering what he could be thinking. His face was set in hard lines, a face for the battlefield, the expression one that Thorin had never seen him wear in his own home. “As you see.”

The portrait had been taken around the same time as the one that hung in Thorin’s own sitting room. Dwalin and he were the same age, though Dwalin was much better turned out, certainly much handsomer, with his smile and kind eyes. He didn’t look frightened at all; when they were very young, Thorin was convinced that nothing could daunt him and _how_ he had admired him. 

There too was Balin, full-grown and dark-haired (the lads exclaimed over that for some minutes), and seated where their parents. Fundin, venerable and tough, white-haired and scarred. Halldóra, tiny and brilliant. Their hands were touching, the wife’s hand over her husband, her fingers disappearing beneath his thumb.

Jealousy. If ever Thorin had spared Dwalin a harsh thought in his life, it boiled down to jealousy. Parents who loved one another. A brother to guide him. Thorin stumbled through the dark path of life, alone, he thought. No one to catch him if he fell. 

But he had fallen, had he not?

His fingers clenched into fists and hot tears stung at his eyes when he thought of Bilbo. When he remembered what he, in his rage, had nearly done. The anger simmered still, hot beneath the cold ash of regret. What kind of king could he be, one who flouted law and custom in anger? Would he be a king at all? Was there time? Every moment ticked down brought them closer and closer to the battlefield. What fate awaited them all there?

“Come,” Thorin said, silencing all the conversation that passed around him, unheard. “We’ve been tarring too long.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really hoping that Thorin would have A Moment, but it didn't quite work out that way.


	56. Chapter 56

Nothing could have startled the dwarves more than a knock at the door. 

Not the hidden door. The ruined Gate, a pile of rubble from which had burst a fire-drake only a few weeks before. It should not have been _possible_ to knock at that door. But before anyone could question the strange phenomenon, there it came again, loud, but not insistent. An almost polite sound that accompanied one patiently waiting for admittance.

It could not herald war. But what did it _mean?_

Dís sucked in a breath through her teeth, held it and prayed silently, _No more. Please let us have no more trouble until the battle begins. We can’t bear it._

The night before an army marched to war was a time of giddy celebration, one last hurrah before the light might go from their lives forever. Drinking, singing, being close to friends and family one last time. There was none of that inside the Mountain. There was only tense waiting and unspoken condolences. There was an _army_ of Orcs, wargs, the Maker alone knew what else. The Elves might fare well - or turn tail and run if the tide of battle seemed to go against them. Then Men were fishermen, hunters, not warriors. They were but fourteen Dwarves. 

It was too heavy a burden for any to bear for long. Now _this_...Dís looked at her brother with concern; if he had to hear any more bad news he might just lay down his sword, walk onto the battlefield with open arms and let the monsters have him.

“I’ll go,” Thorin volunteered, his voice lifeless and dull. He was lightly dressed for war, ready at once to pull on his greaves, vambraces and helmet, but his face and hands were yet uncovered. 

“What if it’s a trap?” Dori asked. The knock came again, just a little more insistently this time. 

“It doesn’t sound like a trap,” Kíli said, cocking his head toward the sound. 

Dori gave him a pointed look, “If you planned an ambush, you wouldn’t want it to sound that way either, would you?”

“That doesn’t sound like an ambush,” Dwalin said. “Damned if I know _what_ it is - ”

“Let’s find out,” Fíli said abruptly. He smiled weakly and shrugged. “With an army marching on us, it’s not as if things could get any worse, eh?”

No one said anything. It seemed an invitation to tempt Fate already, without any further input on their part. In the end, all the Company went forth; they had come this far together, whatever awaited them outside the Gate they ought to face together.

The Dwarves were resplendent in their armor, half-donned as it was. Their hair and beards had been braided tightly away from their faces and the metal that adorned their bodies had been polished until it shone in the twilight. Silver, gold, bronze, all the colors to be found within the earth that was their rightful inheritance. In their hands they held axes, warhammers, and swords forged and wielded by their ancestors. Would that their strength remain to aid their fighting in the coming battle.

But no army met them on the burned earth that lay upon their doorstep. Instead, they saw the most unlikely grouping: two elves, a halfling, a wizard, and a man. 

The man broke the silence.

“Tillie wanted to come,” Bard said. “She thought you’d want to see that she was alright.”

Dís would have smiled if she had the heart for it. Little Tilda, who had been so taken with them all. How many of her friends or cousins had perished in the blaze? And she thought the Company would feel better if they knew she was alright. 

She glanced up at Bard with interest; had he not told his family their negotiations had broken down? Had he not told them their guests wanted to wage war? Or had she been too young to understand it all?

“We’re glad to hear of it,” Thorin said, a little guardedly. It was a strange way to begin a conversation, none of the words that had passed between himself and Bard had been pleasant. It seemed an age ago that they had taken shelter under his roof, had spoken with his children and wife. Tilda was such a sweet girl…

“Does Bain...does he join the fighting?” Fíli asked, squinting past Bard at the camp of Men and Elves, as if he could see the slight lad, clad for war if he looked hard enough. 

“No,” Bard said at once. “He is too young, he has no skill, he would be...it would be no benefit.”

At that, the man looked down at them over the bridge of his nose, drawing himself up and squaring his shoulders. He seemed to expect a rebuke from the dwarves, a chastisement. Everyone able of body, all to arms. It was said they taught their schoolchildren the art of war. 

“Very wise,” Thorin said quietly, nodding once. “You would gain nothing, but his mother’s tears.”

“And his father’s,” Bard added, relaxing his stance somewhat. Thorin only nodded in return. 

Children fighting wars. If any would know the danger of sending younglings into battle, untried and unready, it was the Dwarves of Erebor. How could they shame him for sparing his son?

“I have come,” the prince of the Woodland Realm, Legolas, spoke suddenly into the silence. “To return to you something that was taken.”

He spoke as if by rote; perhaps he had practiced these words in the tents. The thought amused Dís and she felt an hysterical giggle well up in her chest, but she bit her cheek and kept her expression neutral. A shifting behind her made her turn slightly. Kíli was standing just at her back, eyes narrowed, looking between the Elves with open curiosity - and not a touch of hostility. 

Ah, Tauriel. Of course Dís remembered the red-haired Captain, she had been a visitor at her cell many times. And the one her sons shared with Ori. How disappointed Kíli had been to believe them all betrayed by her. And how heart-rending for Dís that her son’s trusting nature should suffer its first hurt. For her part, the she-elf did not look at them, her eyes were trained on Legolas

With a flourish he produced a sword, Orcrist. The one he had accused Thorin of having stolen. 

“I have been told,” he said, light eyes cutting toward Gandalf so that there could be no doubt as to who had told him, “that this was a gift from Lord Elrond of Imladris.”

“You were told so by me,” Thorin said, teeth clenching, but Balin coughed audibly behind him and he closed his mouth. 

“I did not believe you,” Legolas replied matter-of-factly. “And I was in error. I will not take from you a gift fairly bestowed.”

‘Fair.’ What a pretty word that was. Dís held her breath, hoping her brother would take the damn sword; it was a fine piece of craftsmanship. Even if the only reason that Legolas thought to return it was because he feared mingling in the affairs of another of his kind, at this point, she thought it would be wise for her brother to take anything he could from them.

So too did Thorin. After a moment’s hesitation, he reached out and took the sword in his hands. He did not thank the prince, but he inclined his head very slightly. Legolas rocked back, nodding more brusquely, then looked at Tauriel. There was all grace and lightness of foot in his posture, but Dís had the distinct impression that he was anxious. 

“Shall we be gone?” he asked her.

“You may go,” she said, visibly collecting herself - and she _must_ have been under the sway of some powerful emotion for Dís had never found it so easy to read the body language of Elvenkind before. “But there is something I must do.”

“If you come bearing a message from your king - ” Thorin began, steel in his voice and fire in his eyes, but Tauriel shook her head.

“I speak for myself alone,” she said firmly. “I come with no orders. My words - my feelings - what I say now, I say because I must. I remember you.”

Thorin must have looked at her strangely for she pursed her lips and a line of consternation appeared between her red eyebrows. She did not seem to be one accustomed to speech-making, not with an audience such as this. Her voice was made for commanding troops, speaking simply. Yet she persevered, speaking now from the heart.

“I remember you,” she said again. “On that day...when we stood upon the ridge. I did not expect to see so many fleeing the mountain. Truly, we did not know what we would find, if we would bring a warning or if we would be too late. And we were too late to save your home and those within it. I cannot apologize for that, it was beyond our powers. But to turn away as we did...if I am the only one who speaks these words to you, if I am alone in believing that I must speak them, so be it. To turn away - I _remember_ you. You asked for our help. And we did nothing.”

The elf’s eyes were bright, but no tears fell to besmirch her cheek. She looked over Thorin’s head, at the ruin of the Gate. Did she see them again? Staggering out of the Mountain, sobbing, screaming, choking? 

“The memory…” she trailed off, shook her head, perhaps afraid of revealing too much.

Legolas reached out a hand, but his fingers only brushed the back of her arm. “Tauriel.”

She did not seem to hear him.

“I have come to say that I am sorry. That it was wrong of me to leave you in such a state.” One long hand lay over her heart, fingers curled tight; a dwarven gesture of sincerity. “I should have tried to help. To ignore the suffering of any fellow-creature is a grave wrong. It changes nothing, but I would have you hear me.”

Thorin heard her. They all heard her and marveled. It was the first time an Elf had made a Dwarf an _apology_ in millenia. She could not speak for her fellows, but she could speak for herself. That gesture alone was more than anyone could have expected. _No one_ apologized to them. No one said they were sorry for what had transpired that day. None but a Dwarf would beat their breasts and mourn with them for their lost ones; from all other quarters they only heard that they had brought such suffering upon themselves.

Thorin was clearly reeling. At least, it was clear to her that he was. Maybe their visitors thought he was cold, unfeeling as the rock they stood before, but they did not understand stone and they did not understand Thorin. 

But just because Dís knew her brother, it did not follow that she could read his mind. An apology, even from one Elf was a near-impossibility, but that did not change the fact that it was one-hundred years too late. That her regret, in the end, changed nothing. If she was well-aware of that fact, if she could still feel a prickle of resentment in her belly even _after_ the words had landed upon her ears, she did not doubt for an instant that Thorin felt both the weight of the gesture and all its futility. 

“I have heard,” he said, his voice low and deceptively even. Lifting his chin slightly, Thorin looked into the elf’s eyes and said only one thing more, “Thank you.”

They spoke nothing else to one another. Tauriel nodded and she and her companion retreated, back to the camp. She had not come expecting forgiveness and would not wait for one; it would cheapen her apology and Thorin’s acceptance. 

Dís let out a long, low breath. She looked around at her companions; the only word that could rightly sum up their expressions was gobsmacked. Dwalin’s brows were drawn together in a stormy thundercloud and Balin - ah, here was a surprise - Balin’s expression was identical. When he felt her eyes upon him he schooled his face once more into impassivity, but Dís had seen his fury. The wound for them was as raw as it was for Thorin. Especially now that they had stood so close to the bodies of Smaug’s final victims within the Mountain. Forgiveness would not come easy, if it ever came at all, even for one of the Woodland Realm who professed her grief, but it was _something_ for her to have been heard. 

That left only their hobbit. He, like Gandalf, stood slightly apart. The wizard’s hat shaded his eyes, he seemed willing to act only as overseer of this conference. Until Bilbo took a faltering step toward the Company, then the wizard raised his head and fixed his eyes upon Thorin.

A protector too, then. Dís could have cursed him; where was he when _they_ needed his protection?

“I never meant to cause more trouble,” Bilbo said, swallowing hard. The apple in his throat bobbed as he did and Dís blinked a little, feeling a bit of concern for him. He’d been far plumper when they met him in the Shire. His waistcoat hung loose now and there were deeper lines on his face, more spots of grey in his hair, she thought. He looked older, tired. She wondered what they looked like to his eyes.

“I was trying to help,” he went on. Simply. Quietly. “I was wrong. To take what was yours...it was very wrong of me and I am sorry for what I did.”

Like Tauriel and Legolas, Bilbo said his bit and did not wait to see if he had been forgiven. He turned from the Company - giving each of them a going-over with his eyes, bright and shining - and prepared to walk back to the encampment.

“Wait.”

Thorin strode forward, stopping well away from the halfling. Bilbo turned back around, astonished. Thorin lowered his eyes to meet the hobbit’s. When he spoke, his voice was quieter even than Bilbo’s had been.

“There are not words - _I_ do not have the words to beg your apology. But I must try. For the injury I did to you - for that and _worse_ that I thought to do to you, Master Baggins, I am sorry, from my heart.”

It was the sincerest apology Thorin could make in the common tongue. His right hand was balled in a fist and he struck his chest hard, the clang of the metal audible to all around. 

“I forgive you,” Bilbo said, favoring Thorin with a small, sad smile. 

“So easily?” the dwarf marveled.

“Well, I would not say _easily_ ,” Bilbo replied, fingers straying to the place where his dirty cravat hid the worst of the bruising. “But I do forgive you.”

“The strength of hobbits,” Gandalf observed, half to himself. Despite all the ire Dís still felt for the wizard, on this point, she could not bring herself to disagree. 

Thorin appeared momentarily overcome. Tears had sprung to his eyes and when he blinked one, then another trailed down his cheeks, disappearing into his beard. He did not wipe them away. 

“Whatever happens,” he said, addressing himself to Bilbo, to Bard, to the Elves, whose uncanny ears probably heard him, “whether we triumph or fail, whether we live or fall, I will consider it an honor to raise my weapons with yours.”

“Hear, hear,” Balin agreed and all the rest of the Company, nodding and muttering, “Aye,” and “May you be blessed with strong steel and tireless arms,” placed their fists over their hearts and nodded. 

Bard bowed his head. “Good luck,” he said. “Whatever happens...good luck.”

A black bird circled overhead, bearing with it a dirty, torn scrap of paper. Dropped in Thorin’s hand, the Company held their breath as he read it. 

“Dáin is not more than a half-day’s journey away,” he said, but there was no relief in him. “So too, his scouts say, are the enemy. When he comes, he brings the battle with him.”


	57. Chapter 57

Tense hours passed. They were made longer by the near-silence everyone maintained, grim and anxious. There was so much to say, but not enough time to say it. 

“What did they want?” Glóin asked the moment they returned from their encounter with the outsiders. “More money?”

Thorin said nothing, but Dís replied, “They wished us luck.” Her cousin whistled between his teeth and shook his head; that was the last peep any of them had heard through the night.

They did spend an awful lot of time bumping into each other. Rather than claiming workspace, the Company tended their weapons and armor side by side, knocking elbows, rubbing shoulders, just leaning one against the other. 

To Dís, the silence was akin to torture. She’d always hated the quiet and to pass this time now, as if it was a slow-moving Ered Luin summer day felt wrong to her. It felt like time was being wasted.

“Stretching my legs,” she said, standing up and leaning her axe against the wall between Fíli and Kíli. “Fetch me when the battle starts up.”

Someone stood up behind her, she heard the heavy tred of footsteps following her, but she just walked on. Likely it was Fíli or Kíli, coming to joke about the battle or else boast - neither could she bear without running the risk of dragging them into some storage cupboard and locking them inside. Or perhaps it was Thorin who would try to comfort her by heaping blame upon himself. She might punch him and he needed to be hale and whole for what was to come. 

“Where are you going to?”

Surprised stopped her. Not her sons. Not her brother. Dwalin.

“Someplace that doesn’t make me want to weep,” she said, startling herself with how morose she sounded. Battle was meant to quicken the blood, liven the humors. Wasn’t it?

Dwalin snorted humorlessly. He looked glorious, decked out in armor. But his dark eyes showed nothing but hard misery. “Good luck with that, not easy finding a cheery spot in a tomb.”

“Is that what this is?” she asked, pressing her fingers to her eyes to stem her tears. “Is that what we’ve come to claim?”

The sharp clank of metal-on-metal was loud when he drew her to him; their breastplate prevented their touching, but his fingers worked their way in to the groove where the cold metal edge left a gap of padded leather over her warm skin. 

“Could be,” he murmured into her hair. “It’s the battle that’ll decide it.”

“It’s always another battle,” she complained, happy now that her sons and brother had not followed to hear her plaintive tones. Sounding like a child. “One war or another - Thorin said it never ends, he was right.”

Dwalin kissed her hair. “It’s our lot. Made in secrecy, awoken to strive and toil. To reach great heights, and fall to the darkest depths.”

He was right. Of course he was, he knew the histories better than she. So was the fate of dwarrow-kind. Toil. Beauty. War. Glory. Exile. Grandeur. Poverty. Riches. And so it went, on and on, until the world was made anew. 

“Would you lose all your faith in me if I told you I was afraid?” she whispered, not turning to look at him.

“Oh, lassie.” Dwalin turned her around and kissed her mouth. Resting his head against hers he breathed, “I’d lose all my faith in you if you said you weren’t.”

Silence again. He held out a hand and she took it, biting the inside of her mouth. They went back into the chamber where the others were - no longer preparing, no longer doing much of anything. Sitting. Breathing. It ought to have been mundane, boring, but it felt like a necessary, precious thing. 

Dís took her place again, laying her axe on the ground before her. Fíli and Kíli feel in, one on each side. Kíli lay his head against her shoulder and Dís kissed his forehead. Fíli tucked his finger in the crook of her arm and she swallowed hard - remembered holding him for the first time, remembered thinking that here was the only truly _good_ thing she’d ever been given - then kissed him as well. She only let them go when the wardrums sounded from out of doors.

Dáin had come, but there was no time for a greeting, no time to exchange pleasantries. He and Thorin spoke hastily of battle and none of his warriors unmounted, nor even took off their helms. 

Dís’s eyes swept over them. Five hundred dwarrows, clad for war. Would it be enough?

“The Defiler’s forces are double what we’ve got, easily,” Dáin said, not bothering to disguise his concern. “If we could call for aid from the Orocarni - but we can’t, there’s not time.”

Thorin nodded; all this he knew and he saw no reason to reply. 

“We’re with you, though,” he said, extending his hand and clasping Thorin’s arm. “To the last.”

Thorin took Dáin’s arm in turn, knocking their heads together familially. “Thank you, cousin. With all my heart.”

Dáin smiled, then turned his eyes to Dís and her sons, favoring them with quick embraces. “Aren’t they grown up well! I’ll wager you lads don’t remember me - ”

“Sure we do,” Kíli said quickly. “You came West once, brought us great presents!”

Dáin laughed, a strange sound in such a somber moment. “Glad to know that’s my reputation among my cousins - gift-bearer! I wish I’d ventured back more often…”

“We saved you a trip, didn’t we?” Dís asked, a trifle coolly. What would this journey have been had they some of Dáin’s warriors at their backs? What would have been different? What would have been better? She could never know, but she could not help wondering.

“I hope to make many more,” Dáin replied so earnestly that she almost forgave him. “Truly.”

“Excuse me,” Thorin interrupted. “How long do we have?”

“We rode swiftly,” Dáin informed him. “Onar!”

A mounted dwarf with a thick, tightly plaited black beard came forward at once. “An hour, maybe two,” he said. “Jari was the last to catch sight of them, he rode like an avalanche to meet us, he said he didn’t think they saw him, but there’s no telling how quick their wargs went over - ”

“Thanks,” Thorin cut him off and strode away. 

“Where are you going?” Dís called after him.

“There’s something I must do - something I have to give,” Thorin said. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

The truly proper thing to do would have been to let him go with a nod. It would have been what her mother would have done. Freya would have sent Thráin away with a wish that his axe be bloody when next they met. But Dís was not her mother and if...if she did not see him, if their enemy came hard upon them, she would not have his last thought of her be of her silence.

Dís threw herself into Thorin’s arms and he caught her. She kissed him and held him and shuddered and said, “See that you do come back. Please. For me.”

Thorin squeezed her, she was sure of it, though she couldn’t feel the press of his arms. “I’d do anything for you, namad. I’d try.”

“Don’t try,” she said, pulling back with overbright eyes. “Just come back.”

The wargs did indeed ride hard. Those were the last words she spoke to her brother before the battle. She glimpsed him once, rallying all their allies to him as their foes bore down into the valley. Then she lifted her axe and sword and thought of nothing but the fight.

It was not an ambush; they would have stood no chance if it was. Elvish arrows flew, striking dead the Orcish vangard. There were wargs, whose teeth were dulled as they bit down on dwarvish armor, the chariots of the Iron Hills broke through their lines like a knife through cheese. 

There were more of them than she thought possible. They had spawned in the Hill of Sorcery and they fought like possessed things. Here a snarl, there a spurt of blood, still there hot breath, fetid and too close.

Dís fought for her life. It was hard to see beyond her helm and soon sweat dripped into her eyes, down her face, into her beard. When she could she tried to keep track of her kinsmen - Nori dodged a spear to the chest that had her heart in her throat - but every time she felled an orc another sprang back to take its place.

She wished she had thought or breath enough to pray. Listening to the cadence of screams brought only two words to mind, _Not them, not them, not them._

At last, when it felt as though the battle would never end - that this would be her life now, thrusting, defending, cutting open hot and putrid veins - there was a break in the lines and she saw her boys, back to back and by the _Maker_ , Kíli was smiling. 

But there were more coming. Heedless of her position, careless of what arrows might have been shot, what lances thrown, Dís ran to them. A whirl of her axe knocked an orcish hammer away from Fíli’s head; her sword cleaved the arm from the body. 

“Thanks, Mam!” Fíli shouted, with a flash of teeth, a grin or a grimace - possibly both. 

“Alright?” she shouted over the din of the battle. 

“Great fun!” Kíli hollered back. “And you?”

“Never better!” she replied, impaling a warg up through the throat. “Thanks - good manners!”

“Always!” he shouted. He turned toward her, about to say more, but a mace swung and caught him on the cheek. 

“Kíli!” Fíli and Dís shouted at once. He went down, but he was moving, clawing at his helm, ripping at the straps frantically. Dís swooped in to cover him as he pulled it off. Half his head seemed to be bleeding, dark red and soaking his hair.

_Head wounds bleed fast, _she tried to remind herself to quell the rapid beating of her heart, to keep from reaching to him, to drag him away to safety - there was no safe place, nowhere to go - Kíli hauled himself up and raised his sword. Blood smeared across his mouth, but he swallowed it back and fought, harder now. No smiles.__

__“Thorin!”_ _

__It was Fíli who’d shouted. And a moment later, Dís saw why. It was the Pale Orc she saw first, baring down with hammer and blade upon her brother. They were fighting upon a slope, Thorin had the low ground, the disadvantage and he was all alone._ _

__“Stay back!” she cried to her sons. “Stay back!”_ _

__The decision - no, no, it wasn’t that. She didn’t decide anything. She didn’t think. It came to her as naturally as drawing breath._ _

__Go to Thorin. Thorin mustn’t be alone. Thorin must _never_ be alone._ _

__She’d only just come within striking distance when Thorin fell. She saw not where he’d taken the wound. She only saw him crumble beneath the Orc’s club. With a cry she struck the Orc hard in the leg with her own sword, but the flesh was tough and though the wound might have proved mortal upon another being, the mostrous Orc only screeched and turned against her._ _

__Dís was outmatched, she knew that plainly. As a warrior she was as good as any of their race, but Azog the Defiler was older than she and, with the callous cruelty of all his kind, fought to win or die. Her axe was battered away. Her helmet flew from her shoulders after the buckles took a glancing blow that might have severed her head clean off. Her hair flew free, getting in her mouth, her eyes, tasting of salt and blood._ _

__“Dís!”_ _

__Someone was shouting for her, but she did not turn to see who. The clammer of the battle roared in her ears, one loud din. Was someone coming to her aid? Or crying out against her fall?_ _

__The sword she held, Frerin’s sword scored a glancing blow against the Orc’s good arm. The beast dropped his club and fell to his knees, the leg that had taken the hit before finally giving out. The club hit her arm as it went, though it did not crush her armor, it caught her shoulder so that she was wracked with searing, burning pain from the joint through her fingers; it had been wrenched out of its socket and now she fought, one armed with only one weapon to her._ _

__Azog swung at her with the blade he wielded, meeting her sword; she was a match for him in strength if nothing else and she did not drop her sword, but his reach was longer. She could come close enough only to block, not to wound._ _

__“Mam!”_ _

__The boys? Did they need her? Were they calling for help._ _

__She was their mother; it was instinct that drove her to turn her head._ _

__The swish of metal made her turn back, hair flying, eyes tearing. She blocked the blow, but not in time; the sword cut deep into the joining of her armor at her waist. She staggered. She fell._ _

__Azog stumbled to his feet, grinning with his sharp teeth. He was so close that Ds could see herself reflected in his eyes. Funny, she didn’t look scared; she looked furious._ _

__Her sword was out of reach. She scrambled backward, feeling the wound at her side gush with every movement. No weapon. No shield. Then something hard and sharp pressed against her leg and she remembered the dagger concealed in her boot. It had come from Erebor, made it to the West and back. A beautiful thing that had never drawn blood. Only to be used if one was close enough to reach out and _touch_ the foe with a fingertip._ _

__Ignoring the pain that threatened to make her faint, Dís reached into her boot, removed the silver blade, thinner than her smallest finger, and drew it back to stab her face where she saw it bearing down on her from the Defiler’s red, wrathful gaze._ _

__She slumped back. She thought she heard her name again. Then she heard nothing more._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THERE ARE TWO MORE CHAPTERS LEFT PLEASE DON'T PANIC.


	58. Chapter 58

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a LOT shorter than I wanted it to be, but our favorite lady isn't exactly up for much at the moment. **Warning for one swear word.** Almost done!

She woke - or she thought she woke - to darkness. Whether her eyes were open or closed, she could not say. She could not scream, could not feel anything, whether she was standing or lying where she fell. It was dark. But it was far from quiet.

At first, Díd thought she could hear the battle all around, but there was no sound of steel or screams from the wounded. Just the quiet murmur of voices. Familiar voices, but she could not place them.

_”Poor lass - poor lads - oh, I’m sick for all of them, just sick!”_

_“That’s the way of it, my dear. To arms and home and the road again.”_

_“Over millennia, aye, but not all of it in six months!”_

_“Six months! Would that it were only six months! Ama, these children have been well trained for sorrow, I don’t think they’d know what to do with themselves otherwise!_

_“Don’t say that, darling. Don’t say that. It could still come out alright._

_“Alright! They’ll be slaughtered! They’ll see it all come to pass just as it did at Azanulbizar - ”_

Two ‘dams were arguing. Dís could not be sure but one of them sounded so like her mother that she would have turned her head to look, but she could not move. Another voice, much deeper than any who had spoken before, snorted.

_“All due respect for your ravings, lass - ”_

_“Ama!”_

Another voice, so familiar. Thorin? No, no, not Thorin…

_“ - they’re not so badly off. Doing rather well, eh? A force of five-hundred dwarves is nothing to sneeze at, even if they do come from the Iron-fucking-Hills -”_

_“Here she goes.”_

_“All I’m saying is it’d have been nice if they could’ve spared a few hundred when Thorin asked - ”_

_”Orc-slaying and dragon-slaying are two different enterprises - you should know that most of all.”_

Someone else. This time, Dís placed the voice. _Udad?_

_“Both require equal nerves and the Dwarves of the Iron Hills - ”_

_“Now, now, Dáin’s come through in the end, hasn’t he? And they aren’t fighting alone, they’ve Men and the Elves of the Woodland -”_

_“You’ll forgive me my worries, I’m sure, but _your_ sons could run through a cavern of goblins and come out the otherside without a scratch. They _did_ , unless you’ve forgotten -”_

Dís knew that voice. She did! She tried to call out, to scream, but she could not open her mouth. _Ama?_

_“Anyone else hear that?”_

And that, undoubtedly, was Frerin. So, she was either going mad, or -

_“Let’s not bring anyone’s sons into this - ”_

_”They’re in it! Everyone’s sons are in it! And, I hardly need mention, my daughter - ”_

There was a collective intake of breath, a strangled gasp, and one hearty cry of approval which was cut off after the one who voiced the approval was...punched. It did sound as though someone had just been hit.

Then, the whispering.

_“No, no, oh, Thorin - Dís - I can’t watch, I’m leaving, I can’t do this, you can’t make me -”_

_“No one’s forcing you to stay. You’ll know how it comes out soon enough.”_

_“Come away!”_

_“No. I’ll stay. I need to see this.”_

_Ada,_ Dís thought because it was him and her heart should be racing, but she felt nothing, saw nothing, only blackness and she would have panicked if she could because then there was silence, then there was nothing until -

_“Oh, you dear lass. Darling girl - don’t worry. Don’t worry about a thing, sweet, it’ll be alright.”_

_“Well done, namad! My favorite bit was when you all had a toast at the bear’s house - inspired!”_

_“Well fought, little namesake. You did me proud.”_

_“You’ve done all of us proud - and your brother! Tell Thorin - ”_

_“Ah, don’t let’s start in on that. Well done, my dear. You’ve all done very well._

_“Aye.”_

_“That’s all you’ve got to say? Ah. Well….dearest girl, I wish none of it had happened, I wish I’d done better for all of you...I’m sorry, truly. But you’ve all done splendidly. Done us all proud.”_

__“’Course she did! Diamond lass, she is! And what a fine job you done with them lads as well! And all the rest - love you all. Never forget it.”_ _

__“I love you too, if you can believe it - Dís, I’m sorry. And Thorin. I’ve so many things to apologize for, there isn’t the time for it...but someday I’ll tell you properly. I promise.”_ _

__“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry - I...am sorry.”_ _

__Please_ , _she thought, at once a dwarfling of twenty-five years old, a young widow in exile and a grown dwarrowdam on the brink of losing everything she held most dear, I just want to go home.

It was too confusing, these long-gone voices. If she could see them, if she could move, if she could do anything - but then those she had loved best, who had loved her best, were silenced and one remained. A voice she had never heard. A voice that she had always heard. A voice deeper than the Mountains.

_**And so you shall, daughter.** _

When she woke later, she tasted blood, felt awful pain and felt a pounding ache behind her eyes.

The field was full of mist - a fog had rolled in. It was snowing.

Dís sat up, grunting hard, hand going to her side. The wound that had been stuck to her tunic pulled open and hot blood trickled down beneath her armor.

Her face felt stiff and when she raised a hand to her brow, her gauntlet came away with crusted blood, black and red. Was it over? Or was it only stalled?

“Ey!” a voice from nearby. “Here’s another!”

Something was pinning her legs down; it took her a long minute to recognize the corpse of the Pale Orc; it was headless.

A young ‘dam she didn’t recognize, clad in light armor - a healer, she thought - called to someone Dís could not see for aid. Seizing Dís under the arms, she hauled her from beneath the body. Thorin wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Nor did she spy Fíli or Kíli among the bodies strewn about.

Still dazed, Dís only managed, “Did we win?”

All was blackness again before she could hear whatever response was given.

The next time Dís woke up it was dark and quiet again. But warm, this time. And someone was holding her hand.

“There she is,” Bofur said - one of them, for he had three heads. Dís blinked again and they came together into one, hat upon his bedraggled plaits. “‘Fore you ask, Fíli an’ Kíli’re one tent over. Kíli just got out o’surgery. Down one eye, but he’s alright. Fíli’s got a bad leg wound, and it’s broke besides, not sure if it’ll need to go, they’re giving it a day or two, but don’t want it to get septic. And Thorin’s battered, bruised. In a worse state than you...he keeps waking and sleeping. Nightmares. But he asks for you. I’m happy to tell him some good news.”

“What about the rest?” Dís asked, hardly listening to most of what Bofur said. It all washed over her; alive, alive, alive.

“Lessee…” Bofur scratched his chin. “Me an’ mine’re fine. Well, just a few smacks here an’there. Dori, Ori, and Nori’re well, Ori’ll have a wicked scar and he couldn’t be prouder. Dori’s up and about, can’t be kept down, he keeps making the rounds. And them cousins o’yours are the hardiest dwarves as ever grew a beard! Dwalin’s in with Thorin, he treads ‘tween you and him and the lads regular, Balin goes where he’s not, I go where Balin’s not.”

He smiled and if Dís thought she’d stay in one piece in the attempt, she’d try to kiss him. As it was, she squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”

Bofur lifted her hand and kissed her fingers. “‘Course.”

“Well!” A brisk, cheerful voice that reminded Dís strongly of Thyra, though the dwarf was her opposite in coloring, preceded a healer into the tent. “Good morning, my lady! Please don’t get up, that’s a fair few stitches you’ll pull if you try!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dís groaned. “How’d it come out, then? If we’ve got tents, I guess we did alright.”

“Alright!” she exclaimed. “Why, you won the day, my lady! What a sight it was, eagles from the sky and that great bear!”

“What?” Dís asked, too sore and confused to make much of anything. Again, the words played in her mind, Alive, alive, alive, alive, alive.

“It was a bit of a scrape,” Bofur shrugged. “Tell you all about it later.”

“Right,” Dís said. Her eyes were heavy and she wanted to sleep again. “Later…”

There would be later, it was enough for now.


	59. Chapter 59

They’d won. It was almost inconceivable. They who had known such loss, such pain, not once, but over and over again for over a hundred years had _won_. And such a victory!

Their Company was alive. Every last blessed one of them, from their King to their burglar.

“I _heard_ it was a quite a sight,” Bilbo remarked, later, when the dwarves were well enough to have their beds moved to the interior of the Mountain. Ruefully, he rubbed at the bump on his head, still carefully wrapped days later. “I er...had a little - ”

“A _glorious_ battle-wound!” Fíli interrupted. He couldn’t get up and move about yet, so he compensated for the lack of activity by speaking as loudly as possible. His leg was splinted and bound up from ankle to thigh. He complained it itched terribly, but he hadn’t gotten a fever and aside from the pain, it was pronounced sound enough that it wouldn’t need to be removed.

No one was sure whether or not he would limp permanently, but Dís knew that, regardless of the severity of the injury, he would absolutely play it up to get others to do his fetching for him when he was feeling a little slothful.

Kíli, bless him, was already defying all the healers’ orders and sneaking from his bed to go visiting. Although he got dizzy if he stood and walked about for great stretches of time, he was well on the mend, though down one eye. It was impossible to see, his head was so thickly covered in bandages that he looked like a cotton ball, but he was compensating for the lack marvelously - every once in a while he’d pitch his elbow back, just in case anyone tried to sneak up on him. 

The first to enjoy a late night Kíli visit was his mother. He sneaked into her tent - knowing it was hers because he could hear Mister Dwalin snoring through the canvas - and crawled into bed next to her. It wasn’t wide enough or strong enough to bear both their weight and structure collapsed resulting in Kíli suffering a hard turn of his unbandaged ear by an irate Óin, who’d run himself ragged looking in on everyone. 

Dís wasn’t too put out, even though the jostling popped a stitch in her side - not from the movement itself, but her laughing herself silly over it. She ignored her son’s apologies and told him it was the best she’d felt in days.

But now her wound had healed well enough that she was able to move - slowly - under her own power. She shuffled a bit when she walked, but walk she did. There was a giddiness flowing in her veins, the sort of rush one got after one came out the other side of a very dangerous episode that ought to have ended badly. She couldn’t believe their luck - sometimes she couldn’t believe that this wasn’t some dream.

She’d wake at night, worried that she was alone. Utterly alone, in that blackness that had claimed her while she lay...well, she wasn’t sure exactly where or how she’d laid, it seemed like a dream, all of it. And so she would wake in the dark, alone, in a tend and then she would wander as Kíli had done. Peek in on her brother, her sons. Touch them, not firmly enough to wake them. Just to reassure herself that they were there.

Thorin was worse off than the lot of them, but he would heal, Óin assured them of that. Just had to keep quiet - _rest_ , which it was not in his nature to do. 

As a consequence of these orders, it was Dáin who’d mounted the Pale Orc’s head on a pike outside the Gate. It was not the custom of Dwarves, but the Men demanded it. It seemed a little thing to do to appease them, who had suffered losses more grievous than theirs. Revenge, revenge, even now.

Thorin did not look upon it. Most days his eyes were closed and he slept, under potions and salves that held him together and kept pain from his mind. Their burglar was more accustomed to coming about them now than they had been. Evidently, they’d had a talk, when Thorin was awake, shortly after the battle. Dís wondered what they’d said, but hadn’t asked either of them. It wasn’t any of her business.

They’d removed the sickbeds to the Gallery of the Kings. The tapestries kept out the draft, though some of the healers grumbled that the golden floor was irritating to walk on. Dís was beside her brother when he woke there for the first time.

“Hungry?” she asked immediately when he blinked his eyes open and frowned at her.

“No,” he replied curtly. “Whatever Óin’s plied me with makes me feel sick.”

“Too bad - well,” she said, airily, “perhaps not. Fish again. Apparently a dragon falling in a lake means we’ll be eating fish for the next year or smelling them for the next century.”

Thorin didn’t say anything. She thought he must be asleep again, but he reached out and brushed his fingers against hers. 

“We won,” he said, softly. Sounding anything but victorious. 

“We won,” she nodded, then with a half-smile added, “Would’ve been nice to see it for myself, but - ”

“You saw enough,” he said, sighing deeply. “Too much. I’m sorry. I broke all my promises to you.”

Dís shook her head. She bent down and kissed his forehead. His skin was colder than she would have liked, but a pulse fluttered in his temple. As long as he made it one day to the next, that was all she could home for. Enough to be getting on with. Just look forward far enough to imagine tomorrow. 

“You kept the one that mattered most,” she said. “You brought us back home.”

Thorin did not reply. Even now, their enemies vanquished, their homeland reclaimed, he would not be satisfied. She wondered if he ever could be. 

“A home I was carried into,” he said morosely. “On my back.”

“Would you rather have fallen over the doorstep?” Dís asked, poking him in the shoulder. Punching him seemed rather poor form, given all he still suffered, but she did want to make him see sense. “A king’s a king whether he’s stilling on a throne or lying on a floor. Or living in a flat in the West.”

Thorin made a considering noise in his throat. What a different land this was. Another world. One built of stone and smoke and memory. “I was always very fond of that flat. Ugly as it was. And small.”

“It was a very fine place,” Dís agreed. “We could always remake it here. White plaster and all.”

“It’d be cheaper,” he sighed again and Dís poked him harder. 

“Cheaper,” she snorted. “With a pile of treasure half a mile off...don’t worry about it, eh? The Men’ll be licking their wounds for a while yet. Bard’s still abed, as I heard, wait until he’s up and about before you think of building.”

“What should I think about instead?” Thorin asked, rolling his eyes up to look at her. “You’re good for that. Turning my mind to pleasanter things.”

“Ah, no,” Dís shook her head. “Did those potions do something to your eyes? It’s my lads you’re wanting, not me.”

“Nah, you,” Thorin replied. His face and tone were very serious, as they always had been. “You...you’ve saved me a thousand times since we left home. I’m so grateful for you.”

“Oh,” Dís said, flustered. Her cheeks burned and her eyes stung and she looked away. “Someone needs to look after you. While you look after everyone else.”

“Not King Under the Mountain, then?” Thorin asked, smiling just a little, but it did her good to see. “Lead Dwarf-Minder?”

“Amounts to the same thing,” Dís shrugged. “Go back to sleep, it’ll all be here when you wake.”

“Not tired,” he said. “Help me sit up, I’ll get bedsores.”

Dís got him to sitting. His chest was a wash in bandages and his hands shook a little as she grasped them to aid him. “How’s that?”

“I’ll let you know just as soon as I can breathe again,” Thorin replied, wincing and sitting back against his pillows. “Better, actually.”

“You two!” Dwalin exclaimed, bearing down on them with bowls of - if Dís wasn’t mistaken - fish stew. “You’ll get the wrath of the healers of the Iron Hills called down on me and I don’t need anymore blows coming down just now.”

“Ha!” Dís laughed. This time nothing snapped. “Just as hale as ever you were - I wonder, did you _fight_ at all?”

A less well-loved dwarf would have suffered a serious blow for such a comment but Dwalin smiled at Dís and leaned close, “I hid behind Balin all the while - hunkered down low and let him do all the work.”

“I _knew_ it!” Kíli called gaily. He had Fíli’s arm slung over his shoulder and the two of them limped loudly to their uncle’s bedside. “You owe me money.”

“I never made a bet on Mister Dwalin’s techniques!” Fíli protested. “Though now he mentions it, I remember now, ‘And if you lads find yourself between a Mountainside and a rockslide, just use Mister Balin as a shield!’”

“Right!” Kíli smacked himself (gently) on the head. “How could I have forgotten?”

“Are you trying to tell me you ever heeded any of my lessons?” Dwalin asked, with feigned flattery. “And here I was thinking you never heard a word of it.”

“Sorry,” Kíli said, “Didn’t quite catch that.”

Fíli gave him a hard pinch with the fingers that were resting on his shoulder. “You lost an eye, not an ear, cabbagehead.”

Thorin smiled at them. He looked tired. He looked sorrowful, still. But he smiled at them nevertheless. Down an eye and a leg, but alive and laughing. All they could hope for - more, perhaps, than Thorin had dared to hope. 

“Soup’s cold,” Dwalin said, forcing bowls on Dís and Thorin.

“Not hungry,” Thorin said, turning a little green at the smell of it.

“I’ll take it,” his nephews gallantly volunteered at once. 

“I’ll see if I can’t find some bread - ” Dwalin began, but stopped when Dís cried out suddenly. “What is it, lass, do you want me to fetch - ”

“Pen and paper,” Dís insisted. “We’ve got to write to Thyra - to Hervor - to _everyone_. Tell them we’re alright. Tell them...to come. Quick as they can.”

“I can manage a letter,” Thorin said, flexing the fingers of his hands. “Go on, then - king’s orders.”

 

Dwalin grumbled good-naturedly and went off.

“You’ll write it just as I say it,” Dís informed her brother. “If I leave it up to you, you’ll be sure to worry them out of their beards before you get to the bit about how we’ve won.”

 

“Very well,” Thorin agreed. “What’ll I say?”

“Tell them it’s alright,” Dís replied. “Tell them it’s all alright - we’ve got a lot to do - but we’ll all do it together.”

Naturally, Fíli and Kíli wanted their say and by the time Thorin was finished, the raven they sent away was laden down with ten pages, filled front and back. But in big, bold script at the bottom was the most important message.

**Come. Come to Erebor. Come home soon.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You people aren't going to believe this, but I only have one message for you - "To Be Continued."


End file.
